• Current
• Archives
• Log In
• Register
• Announcements
• About JLT Articles
• For Authors

Home > Vol 13, No 2 (2019) > Horstmann

Jan Horstmann

Zeitraum und Raumzeit: Dimensionen zeitlicher und räumlicher Narration im Theater

(Abstract)

Full-length article in: JLT 13/2 (2019), 185–205.

The positioning in space and time of performed narration in theater poses a specific challenge to classical narratological categories of structuralist descent (developed, for example, by Gérard Genette or Wolf Schmid, for the analysis of narrative fiction). Time is the phenomenon which connects narratology and theater studies: on the one hand, it provides the basis for nearly every definition of narrativity; on the other, it grounds a number of different methodologies for the analysis of theater stagings, as well as theories of performance – with their emphasis on transience, the ephemeral, and the unrepeatable, singular or transitory nature of the technically unreproducible art of theater (e. g. by Erika Fischer-Lichte). This turn towards temporality is also present in theories of postdramatic theater (by Hans-Thies Lehman) and performance art. Narrating always takes place in time; likewise, every performance is a handling of and an encounter with time. Furthermore, performed narration gains a concrete spatial setting by virtue of its location on a stage or comparable performance area, so that the spatial structures contained in this setting exist in relation to the temporal structures of the act of theatrical telling, as well as the content of what is told. Both temporal and spatial structures of theater stagings can be systematically described and analyzed with a narratological vocabulary. With references to Seymour Chatman, Käte Hamburger and Markus Kuhn among others, the contribution discusses how narratological parameters for the analysis of temporal and spatial relations can be productively expanded in relation to theater and performance analysis. For exemplary purposes, it refers to Dimiter Gotscheff’s staging of Peter Handke’s Immer noch Sturm (which premiered in 2011 at the Thalia Theater Hamburg in cooperation with the Salzburger Festspiele), focusing on its transmedial broadening of temporal categories like order, duration, and frequency, and subsequent, prior, or simultaneous narration. The broadening itself proves feasible since all categories of temporal narration can be applied to performative narration in the theater – at times even more fruitfully than in written language, as is the case, for example, with the concept of ›duration‹. The concept of ›time of narration‹ too can be productively applied to theater. Whilst a subsequent narration is frequently considered the standard case in written-language narratives on the one hand – a conclusion that is, however, only correct if the narrator figure and narrative stand in spatiotemporal relation to one another, i. e. if a homodiegetic narrator figure is present – it is commonly held that in scenic-performed narration, on the other hand, the telling and the told take place simultaneously. The present contribution argues against this interpretation, as it stems from a misguided understanding of the ›liveness‹ of performance. ›Liveness‹ refers only to the relationship between viewers and performers and their respective presence, but not to their temporal and spatial relationship to the told. Rather, the following will argue that the time of narration in theater (as well as in film) stays unmarked in most cases. It is possible, however, to stage subsequent, prior, or simultaneous narration, too. Immer noch Sturm is one example for a performed subsequent narration. For audiovisual narration, then, a special case of iterative narration (telling once what happened n times) can be identified, which is to tell a few times (n minus x) what happened n times. As an additional category for the analysis of narrative temporality in audiovisual narrative media, I propose what I venture to call ›synchronized narration‹, in order to describe the specificity of spatiotemporal relations in performance. In synchronized narration, two or more events (that happen at different places or times in the narrative world) are shown at the same time on stage. This synchronized performance of several events is only realizable within the audiovisual dimension of spatial narration and not in written-language based narration. Furthermore, for narrative space relations the categories ›space covering‹, ›space extending‹, and ›space reducing narration‹ are suggested in order to analyze the relationships between discourse space and story space(s). Discourse space emerges in the concrete physical space of the performance when narrativity is present. Within this discourse space any amount of story spaces (with any expansion) can emerge. However, whilst in time-extending narration the time of the telling is longer than the time of the told, in space-extending narration the told space is bigger than the space of the telling. This principle is analogously valid for time-reducing or space-reducing narration. The transmission and media-specific broadening of temporal and spatial narratological parameters reveals how time and space form a continuum and should thus be linked and discussed alongside one another in analytical approaches to narrative artifacts. The staging of Immer noch Sturm actualizes a metaleptic structure, in which temporal borders are systematically dissolved and the overstepping of spatial borders becomes an indicator for the merging of different temporal levels. Referring back to established narratological parameters and developing analogous conceptual tools for narrative space facilitates a comparative analysis both of specific narratives and of narrative media and thus not only offers a productive challenge of classical narratological parameters, but allows to investigate and construct a holistic – if culture-specific – overall view of narration.

References

Abbate, Carolyn, Unsung Voices. Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century, Princeton, NJ 1991.

Amann, Klaus, »Ein Traum von Geschichte«. Zu einigen Voraussetzungen von Peter Handkes Immer noch Sturm, in: Anna Estermann/Hans Höller (Hg.), Schreiben als Weltentdeckung. Neue Perspektiven der Handke-Forschung, Wien 2014, 17–46.

Benjamin, Walter, Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 1: Abhandlungen. Zweiter Teil, hg. von Rolf Tiedemann/Hermann Schweppenhäuser, Frankfurt a.M. 1991.

Brandstetter, Gabriele, Aufführung und Aufzeichnung – Kunst der Wissenschaft?, in: Erika Fischer-Lichte/Clemens Risi/Jens Rosel (Hg.), Kunst der Aufführung – Aufführung der Kunst, Berlin 2004, 40–50.

Buchholz, Sabine/Manfred Jahn, Space in Narrative, in: David Herman/M.J./Marie-Laure Ryan (Hg.),Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, London/New York 2005, 551–555.

Chatman, Seymour, Coming to Terms. The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film, Ithaca, NY et al. 1990.

Chatman, Seymour, Story and Discourse. Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film [1978], Ithaca, NY et al. ⁶1993.

Dennerlein, Katrin, Narratologie des Raumes, Berlin/New York 2009.

Esslin, Martin, Das Zeichen des Dramas. Theater, Film, Fernsehen, Hamburg 1989.

Fischer-Lichte, Erika, Ästhetische Erfahrung. Das Semiotische und das Performative, Tübingen et al. 2001.

Fischer-Lichte, Erika (Hg.), Performativität und Ereignis, Tübingen et al. 2003.

Fludernik, Monika, Narrative and Drama, in: John Pier/José Ángel Garcia Landa (Hg.),Theorizing Narrativity, Berlin/New York 2008, 355–383.

Genette, Gérard, Die Erzählung, hg. von Andreas Knop [1994], München ²1998.

Hamburger, Käte, Die Logik der Dichtung [1957], Stuttgart ³1977.

Handke, Peter, Immer noch Sturm, Berlin 2012.

Herrmann, Max, Das theatralische Raumerlebnis, in: Jörg Dünne/Stephan Günzel (Hg.),Raumtheorie. Grundlagentexte aus Philosophie und Kulturwissenschaften, Frankfurt a.M. 2006, 501–514.

Horstmann, Jan, Narrative Representation and Fictionality in Performative Media, Frontiers of Narrative Studies 4:1 (2018), 5–23 (Horstmann 2018a).

Horstmann, Jan, Theaternarratologie. Ein erzähltheoretisches Analyseverfahren für Theaterinszenierungen, Berlin/Boston 2018 (Horstmann 2018b).

Kahrmann, Cordula/Gunter Reiß/Manfred Schluchter, Erzähltextanalyse. Eine Einführung in Grundlagen und Verfahren. Mit Materialien zur Erzähltheorie und Übungstexten von Campe bis Ben Witter, Kronberg 1977.

Kant, Immanuel, Der Transscendentalen Elementarlehre. Erster Theil. Die Transscendentale Ästhetik. Erster Abschnitt. Von dem Raume, in: I.K., Akademieausgabe von Immanuel Kants Gesammelten Werken, Bd 4:Kritik der reinen Vernunft [1781],Prolegomena [1783], Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten [1785],Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft [1786], Bonn/Essen 2008, 31–36, https://korpora.zim.uni-duisburg-essen.de/Kant/aa04/031.html (27.02.2019).

Kuhn, Markus, Filmnarratologie. Ein erzähltheoretisches Analysemodell, Berlin/New York 2011.

Lahn, Silke, Zeitrelationen zwischen Diskurs und Geschichte, in: S. L./Jan Christoph Meister (Hg.), Einführung in die Erzähltextanalyse [2008], Stuttgart/Weimar ²2013, 133–156.

Lahn, Silke/Jan Christoph Meister (Hg.), Einführung in die Erzähltextanalyse [2008], Stuttgart/Weimar ²2013.

Lehmann, Hans-Thies, Postdramatisches Theater, Frankfurt a.M. 1999.

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, Gesammelte Werke in zehn Bänden, Bd. 6: Hamburgische Dramaturgie [1767–1769], hg. von Paul Rilla, Berlin 1954.

Lotman, Jurij M., Künstlerischer Raum, Sujet und Figur, in: Jörg Dünne/Stephan Günzel (Hg.),Raumtheorie. Grundlagentexte aus Philosophie und Kulturwissenschaften, Frankfurt a.M. 2006, 529–545.

Martínez, Matías/Michael Scheffel, Einführung in die Erzähltheorie [1999], München ⁹2012.

Pfister, Manfred, Das Drama. Theorie und Analyse [1977], München ¹¹2001.

Prince, Gerald, Narratology. The Form and Functioning of Narrative, Berlin et al. 1982.

Richardson, Brian, »Time is out of Joint«. Narrative Models and the Temporality of the Drama, Poetics Today 8:2 (1987), 299–309.

Richardson, Brian, Drama and narrative, in: David Herman (Hg.),The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, Cambridge et al. 2007, 142–155.

Schmid, Wolf, Elemente der Narratologie [2005], Berlin/New York ²2008.

Seel, Martin, Inszenieren als Erscheinenlassen. Thesen über die Reichweite eines Begriffs, in: Josef Früchtl/Jörg Zimmermann (Hg.),Ästhetik der Inszenierung. Dimensionen eines künstlerischen, kulturellen und gesellschaftlichen Phänomens, Frankfurt a.M. 2001, 48–62. 

Tecklenburg, Nina, Performing Stories: Erzählen in Theater und Performance, Bielefeld 2014.

Thalia Theater, Immer noch Sturm, Hamburg 2011, https://www.thalia-theater.de/stueck/immer-noch-sturm-2011 (27.02.2019).

Thon, Jan-Noël, Transmedial Narratology and Contemporary Media Culture, Lincoln/London 2016.

Wolf, Werner, Intermedialität: Ein weites Feld und eine Herausforderung für die Literaturwissenschaft, in: Herbert Foltinek/Christoph Leitgeb (Hg.),Literaturwissenschaft: intermedial – interdisziplinär, Wien 2002, 163–192.

Wolf, Werner, Metalepsis as a Transgeneric and Transmedial Phenomenon. A Case Study of the Possibilities of ›Exporting‹ Narratological Concepts, in: Jan Christoph Meister/Tom Kindt/Wilhelm Schernus (Hg.),Narratology Beyond Literary Criticism, Berlin/New York 2005, 83–107.

2019-10-27

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.

Copyright © 2007 – present JLTonline

Contact Webmaster