Iterative Narration

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Michael Niehaus
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 525056600

A historical-typological investigation of iterative narrative forms is planned - a hitherto hardly investigated complex of narratology. According to Gérard Genette, who has attempted to isolate, terminologically delimit and grasp the phenomenon, iterative narration occurs when what has happened many times is told only once. Thus, iterative narration is first and foremost a special form of depicting repetitive processes in time and, in this respect, narrative economy through repetition avoidance, which brings narration close to a distanced description. In 'classical narrative' iterative passages are new entries or have transitional character between dominant singulatively narrated, event-centered text elements. The planned monograph will focus on German-language literature in the period after 1850, in which iterative narrative structures, for a variety of reasons, take on a greater weight of their own. An important role is played by the increased attention to repetitive structures in social reality: everyday life, habits, rituals, compulsive actions, etc. are captured by the distanced gaze of the narrative instance in their persistence in relation to progressive, chronological time. In essence, the question is how to narrate lives that have settled into structures of repetition. To the extent that narrative representation shifts from action to behavioral observation, the boundary between narration and description also begins to blur. Nonetheless, iterative narrative often has a tendency to become 'pseudo-iterative' when detailed scenic narrative is marked as iterative. In order to capture iterative narration more precisely for the first time and to stimulate further research, two monographs are to be produced - the first is devoted to theoretical and typological issues related to iterativity, the second visits the historical development of this mostly inconspicuously functioning narrative procedure exemplarily in some genres. Here, narratives, in particular, the text type portrait, forms of the idyll and autobiography, and finally various forms of modern literature, in which iterative narration occurs because the narrated world and the discussed world overlap, are available for selection.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants