Читать книгу Mind Presentation in Ian McEwan's Fiction - Karam Nayebpour - Страница 11

As an important branch of postclassical narratology, CN has been developing from the classical narratology since 1980s. Analyses of the fictional characters' cognitive aspects in postclassical narratology, according to Palmer, take place within two conceptual frameworks: possible-worlds theory and cognitive science. While the former one »regards the fictional text as a set of instructions according to which the storyworld is recovered and reassembled,« the latter, »derived from cognitive science, studies how various cognitive frames and scripts which are made up of real-world, stereotypical knowledge are applied to the reading process« (»Thought« 606). Moreover, considered »as a subdomain […and] still an emergent trend within the broader domain of narratology,« CN[10] »at present constitutes more a set of loosely confederated heuristic schemes than a systematic framework for inquiry.« The lack of a »systematic framework,« however, does not mean that the related works in this field are disconnected. According to Herman, the »mind relevant aspects of storytelling practices« is a »trait shared by all this work [cognitive approaches to narrative fiction].« Following that, CN is defined as »the study of mind-relevant aspects of storytelling practices« (Herman, »Cognitive« 30–31). It is so because in CN »representation of minds are [considered] fundamental to stories« (Herman, »Cognition« 257)[11]. In addition, reader experiences storyworld mainly through following the cognitive aspects of narrative.

Narrative, according to Herman, is a »cognitive activity« (Basic 98) since its »meaning potential requires the cognitive activity of readers« (Herman, »Cognitive« 33).[12] Furthermore, mind, as claimed by Herman, is crucial to storyworld since »stories both shape and are shaped by what minds perceive, infer, remember, and feel« (»Cognition« 257). Likewise, representation of the experiencing minds is considered to be one of the key concerns in McEwan's work since, as maintained by Nicklas, »The genome and theories of the mind and brain as well as Darwinian evolutionary models or ecological problems of climate change are the background to much of McEwan's fiction and his many articles« (10). CN is, furthermore, concerned with questions that in general deal with narrative production, the nature of fictional minds' functioning as well as their presentation in narrative and narrative understanding. Moreover, in the opinion of Palmer, »One of the concerns of cognitive narratology is the relationship between consciousness and narrative« (»Attributions« 292) which is central to this study too. The following questions, which, according to Herman, »still suggest themselves to the cognitive narratologists« (»Cognitive« 31), are also the fundamental questions of the present study:

How exactly do stories function as tools for thinking? Is it the case that [. . .] narrative is a mode of representation tailor-made for gauging the felt quality of lived experiences? More radically, do stories afford scaffolding for consciousness itself—in part by emulating through their temporal and perspectival configuration the nature of conscious awareness itself? In other words, are there grounds for making the strong claim that narrative not only represents what it is like for experiencing minds to live through events in storyworlds, but also constitutes a basis for having—for knowing—a mind at all, whether it is one's own or another's?[13] (Herman, »Cognitive« 32)

CN, as Herman understands, intends to evaluate narrative as tools for thinking[14] meaning that any narrative provides some cues that initiate the reader's cognitive activities while experiencing narrative. In addition, it is a medium of experience representation and representation of the impact of represented events and situations on characters' consciousness. CN, moreover, intends to connect the storyworlds to the readers' actual world knowledge and experiences treating fictional minds' operation partially like the mental functioning of the actual minds in many respects. It is concerned with the relationship between narrative or storyworld presentation and the actual lived experiences. It examines the relationship between the nature of fictional minds' functioning, the way they are presented as well as their consciousness and the manner they are actualised or configured in the reader's mind while experiencing narrative[15]. All in all, CN-based analysis presupposes the affinity between the storyworld and the actual one and hence attempts to analyse, in Herman's words, the »mind-relevant aspects of storytelling practices« (»Cognitive« 31) in the former one based on the principles of the latter. That is so, because, as Herman suggests elsewhere, fictional minds' examination »entails giving an account of readers' minds, too—of how readers interpret particular textual details as information about characters' attempts to make sense of the world around them« (»Cognition« 245). Likewise, the central concern in AM, AT and CB seems to be the fictional minds' reactions to the challenging situations and events or their mental functioning in different situations. In other words, they both »replicate consciousness in text« (Ridley vii). In AM, for example, Clive-Vernon relationship is mostly represented through their internal broodings both about each other and about themselves. In the same way, the bedroom scene and the beach scene in CB are represented primarily through Edward's and Florence's internal perspectives focusing on their intramental evaluations of the conflicts. Likewise, in AT the narrative mainly shows how Briony's perspective at some particular moments (for example in the fountain scene) is in conflict with that of the others. As a result of this characteristic, these narratives are rich in terms of tools for thinking, experience, consciousness, mindreading and the other cognitive related issues.[16]

The attention to the importance of mind, experience, consciousness as well as the reader's function in narrative interpretation and finally his/her narrative experience are mainly notable within the postclassical phase of narratology. With an autonomous and self-sufficient understanding of the text, classical narratology was limited to the textual framework. According to Jahn, it attempted to refute as far as possible any extraneous factors ignoring »the forces, and desires of psychological, social, cultural and historic contexts.« Therefore, it rejected the idea that »texts« should be »reconstructed in an ongoing and revisable readerly process« (»Cognitive« 67) as pursued by the postclassical approaches to narrative. Further, the abstract nature of classical models, in terms of story and text, is believed to »ignore(s) experience, ideology, and other so-called subjective and contextual elements as much as possible« (Herman and Vervaeck 104). The early narratologists, or Francophone Structuralists, were influenced by the Russian Formalism through Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folktale (1928). After Tzvetan Todorov proposed the term narratology in 1968, they came to be known as structuralist narratologists. They emphasised on narrative form, its intrinsic constituents and common ingredients in order to define a universal pattern or grammar for the understanding of narrative function. The structuralist-inspired narratology, as Gerald Princestates, was »text type rather than context, grammar rather than rhetoric, form rather than force« (A Dictionary 66).

Postclassical narratology, however, has made efforts to extend the focus of analysis in the process of narrative experience beyond the textual frames of narrative though including the contextual elements such as the importance of author, reader, history, class, gender etc. Nevertheless, postclassical narratology, as Herman points out, is not considered as a negation of the classical one but instead it »draws on concepts and methods to which the classical narratology did not have access to« (»Scripts« 1049). Moreover, it:

contains structuralist theory as one of its »moments« but enriches the older approach with research tools taken from other areas of inquiry. Or, to put the same point another way, postclassical narratology expands the scope of narrative analysis and its applicability. The result is not simply new ways of getting at old problems in narrative analysis but a rearticulation of those problems, including the root problem of how to define stories. (»Scripts« 1057)

Therefore, in spite of the fact that »The postclassical approaches partly resist structuralism,« or the so-called classical narratology, »but at the same time rarely if ever make a complete break from it« (Herman and Vervaeck 103). One of the ›research tools‹ that in postclassical narratology has been included in narrative analysis approaches comes from cognitive psychologists. Cognitive approach to narrative, accordingly, argues that narrative readers—who experience narrative using their actual experiences and cognitive abilities—undergo nearly the same experiences as represented in the storyworld or experienced by the fictional characters.

Accordingly, »Cognitive dimensions of stories and storytelling,« according to Herman, »has become an important subdomain within the field of narrative analysis.« It is »concerned both with how people understand narratives and with narrative itself as a mode of understating« (»Narrative: Cognitive« 452). Cognitive approaches to literature, therefore, intend to analyse the (cognitive) techniques readers apply in order to experience narratives. It also explores the ways narrative itself can be taken as a mode of understanding (the minds and experiences) or as a tool for thinking. Hence, the presupposition behind Herman's statement is twofold.[17] Firstly, fictional minds and storyworld as a whole can be treated as well as analysed like actual minds or actual world entities. Secondly, it is implied that from the perspective of cognitive approach to literature, narrative reader or audience is central to the process of decoding narrative information. In the same way, Palmer, as a follower of cognitive theories and approaches, underlines the fundamental role of the reading processes of real readers. He remarks that »the constructions of the minds of fictional characters by narrators and readers are central to our understanding of how novels work, because readers enter storyworlds primarily by attempting to follow the workings of the fictional minds contained in them« (Social 7). However, considering the symbiotic relationship between the diegetic feature (that is narrator) and extradiegetic feature (that is real readers) of the narrative, Herman's and Palmer's stances are unlike those of the classical narratologists. Classical or structuralist narratology inclined to constrain the active role of reader in narrative comprehension by its over emphasis on intradiegetic or textual features.[18]