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Summary Feminist Narratology: Susan Lanser
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Feminist narratology: theoretical introduction Explanation of Susan Lanser: "Sexing narratology: towards a gendered poetics of narrative voice"
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Gender les 11 04/12/15Feminist narratology
The way in which gender studies have influenced other approaches in
literary theory. Notions of gender, sex and sexuality have become
important in other approaches as well. Feminist criticism is difused into a
variety of approaches and is therefore less visible.
Feminist narratology
- Gender and narative that includes feminist narratology and a
variation which is called: queer naratology
- How does gender play a role in all of these narative structures?
- Definitions: ppt => focus on the way gender realtes to narrative
elements and also a metaconcern with narratology in general
(intention to shape and transform the field of narratology)
- Narrative: existed since Aristotle. Later in France, the whole field of
narratology developed. They wanted to develop an exhaustive and
scientific theorie of narrative that would allow them to analyse all
narrative texts. The text on which they beased their theories were
realist or modernist novels. As a general background of narratology
you had the influence of structuralism (desire for rigid classifications,
binaries etc in order to structure everything).
- Plots are not gender neutral but follow gender distinctions.
- Propps theory of fairy tale: classification of all possible plots => they
all implicitly require a male protaginst (implicitly gendered)
- Discrepancy between feminist theories on focus and context and
only looking at texts
- Feminist criticism and narrtalogy also were one of the first to open
up the field of narratology. (first of post-classical narratologies: from
the 90s they developed a whole range of narratologies that take
context in mind: feminist criticism played an important role in that).
They tried to combine approaches.
- Critique on narratology: two keymoments in the development
of narratology
1) publication by Susan Lanser: set the stage for what a feminist
narratology should look like. She wants to see how you can combine
feminist criticism with narratology. Several obstacles to their working
together => feminist criticism is very aware of concepts that mark
narratology + questions text on which narratology is based +
feminism tends to approach literature as a reflection of life, of a
specific society (as a mimetic text) narratology sees a text as
diegetic.
She argues the importance of combining the two approaches; they
enrich one another.
3 aspects: She pruposes that narratology should open up its corpus
and also study texts of women + narratology takes gender as a
, category for the study of texts (category that influences other
classifications) + narrative theory should try to combine close
reading of texts with theoretical abstraction.
2) publication of Warhol
Gendered interventions – Warhol
- Victiorian novels
- Evocations of the reader
- The more defined the narratee, the more distance the text installs
between the narrator and the narratee (higher distance between the
reader and the narratee). She argues that this priciple is based on
only a certain number of texts
Lanser
- PhD on point of view in French and English novels
- She analyses the way narrators are gendered: do they get implict
markers of gender (the way they construct their authority as
narrators).
She also addresses the narrative point of view usually neglected:
real narration.
She also discusses the importance of gender norms and gender
implications in first person narration
Plotting - Case
- She looks at the way narration can be gendered: female characters
narrate something often in an embedded structure in the narrative.
Style of narration that are tributed to male and female differ. In order
to avoid essentialism she points out that in some points male
narrators use a female form of narration and the other way around
after which she points out the consecuences.
- ~ The Yellow Wallpaper: unreliable narrator: discrepancy between
what the narrators tells and what you as reader see in the story. She
appears to act rationally because she wants to find out or catch her
husband and the maid in the act of looking at the paper: her
narrative modulates into a more rational plot narrative (which is
usually male narrative). Her narrative voice changes which is ironic.
Lanser – Sexing narratology: towards a gendered poetics of narrative
voice
She looks at exceptional cases. In general she says that we have not
sufficiently dealt with the issues that are important. She draws attention to
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