Edited Collection on Historiographic Narratology to Be Published in Spiel (Siegener Periodicum for international empiricist literary scholarship)
CALL FOR PAPERS
Twenty years ago, in her study entitled ‘Signposts of Fictionality’ (1990), Dorrit Cohn proposed “some rudiments for a historiographic narratology”. She did so in reaction to narrative approaches that ignored the question of demarcation between fiction and nonfiction to an astonishing degree.
Ever since Hayden White defined history as a “verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse” (White 1973, ix), literary scholars and historiographers alike have been analysing the narrative structure of historiographic texts with the help of conventional narratological tools. However, Cohn, amongst others, has demonstrated that established narrative categories and conventions such as story/discourse, voice, focalisation, and narrator/author (cf. Genette, Stanzel, Bal) do not apply to nonfiction in the same way as to fiction.
In more recent years, scholars, especially from the literary fields, have responded to Cohn’s call for a historiographic narratology, focusing on genre-specific aspects, cognitive criteria and contextual as well as cultural idiosyncrasies of historiographic discourse (e.g. Robert F. Berkhofer, Philippe Carrard, Daniel Fulda, Lionel Gossman, Stephan Jäger, Johannes Süssmann, Ann Rigney, Ansgar Nünning).
Apart from reassessing the applicability of conventional categories of narratology, there has been an increasing awareness that a poetics of historiographic discourse must take into account different media and genres. Today history is mediated via a range of forms such as exhibitions, TV programmes, biopics, theatre performances, radio plays, monographs and magazine articles. The approach to historiographic discourse via ‘traditional’ narratologies designed for written discourse is thus further problematized.
With this in mind, we seek to put together a collection of essays contributed by scholars from a variety of disciplines whose work focuses on historiographic narratives. Thereby, we intend to work towards a historiographic narratology that understands history-writing as a crossmedial and cross-generic phenomenon, exploring appropriate categories for analysis. Furthermore, the cultural and historical production and reception context shall be considered, for example, by taking into account the paratexts (in Genette’s terminology) that accompany historical discourse.
We would welcome contributions pertaining to the following issues:
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the theoretical framework of a typology of historiographic narratives
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present and past approaches to historiographic discourse
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specific forms of historical discourse and their idiosyncrasies (synchronic and diachronic studies)
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media or genre conventions associated with history-writing
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the role of the historian as an author/narrator
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the role of para-/metatexts of history-writing and appropriate categories for their analysis
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the role of literary forms of presentation/ the role of fiction in the presentation of the past
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“what is history now” – present modes of presenting the past and possible challenges they pose for recipients and historians
We are looking for a diversity of material emphasizing and highlighting aspects of historiographic discourse which need to be taken into account in order to arrive at a comprehensive historiographic narratology. Contributions should be between 8000 and 9000 words.
The collection of essays will be published in Spiel (Siegener Periodicum for international empiricist literary scholarship). Spiel (general editor: Reinhold Viehoff) is a well-established journal in English and German that aims at providing a forum for discussion in all branches of philosophical and social sciences with a special emphasis on literary and media studies.
Contributions in the form of short (150-250 word) proposals should be sent to the editor of the special issue Julia Lippert (julia.lippert@anglistik.uni-halle.de) by 15 March 2010.
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