Abstract
Narratological models of narrative framing and embedding have mostly been established through the study of novelistic print literature from the Modern West. Challenging the narratological focus on novelistic print literature and an exclusive focus on Western literary traditions, the curated collection ‘Framing Narratives’ aims to discuss and establish alternative, comprehensive concepts of narrative framing from various cultural and historical perspectives. The primary questions that inspire our collaboration are how to articulate and how to define the narrative and textual boundaries of and within works.
Narratological models of narrative framing and embedding have mostly been established through the study of novelistic print literature from the Modern West. Challenging the narratological focus on novelistic print literature and an exclusive focus on Western literary traditions, ‘Framing Narratives’ aims to discuss and establish alternative, comprehensive concepts of narrative framing from various cultural and historical perspectives. The primary questions that inspire our project are how to articulate and how to define the narrative and textual boundaries of and within works.
This curated collection of insights is the outcome of a fortnightly reading group initiated by Johannes Stephan, which was embedded in the ERC AnonymClassic project (headed by Beatrice Gruendler) and culminated in a series of events and collaborations with EXC 2020 over the past three years. ‘Framing Narratives’ shall open horizons for new methodological readings of premodern and early modern literature in European, African, and Asian contexts and lead to a profound rethinking of the visual, rather static metaphor of the (narrative) frame. Framing narratives presuppose a twofold temporality of “framed” and “framing”, which are never presented in full synchronicity. The two textual layers thus described may form temporal communities that undermine the static hierarchy of outside and inside, embellishment and narrative proper, before and after, and so forth.
In other words, the interplay of two textual levels, operating on different narratological planes yet intersecting as an ensemble, always introduces a new temporality. By conflating the time of the texts and their availability to be read, the frame and framed never cease to relate to each other, establishing a processual interconnection that is reinitiated at every point of reference. In doubling the levels of narration, the asynchronous coupling of “narrated time” and “narrating time” is affected as well, complicating any attempt to identify a clear hierarchy or, for that matter, continuity between the frame and the framed. For example, narrators may situate their story at other times and places, or surrounding texts may reference different roles within the processes of literature, such as editors, readers, listeners, and authors, thus reformulating the content of their texts from a distant perspective. Moreover, by the simple fact that framing devices render it unnecessary to establish clear and linear coherence between two textual levels, those layers themselves are presented as non-simultaneous yet inherently connected. The institutions of both—such as authors, narrators and their voices, characters, places, and historical times—are placed into relations that collectively form a temporality of their own, equally dependent on all invested time modes.
Therefore, the exploration of the relationship of the two layers allows for new insights in both historical and narratological terms. While focussing on the literatures of the Middle East, especially Arabic, ‘Framing Narratives’ spans disciplinary boundaries and connects philological research, literary theory, modern and postcolonial literary studies, and philosophy.
In precise terms, these insights address four areas for the study of framing narratives. They focus, firstly, on the terminology of framing in order to broaden the concept and the dynamics of relationality it implies. Secondly, they challenge metaphorical restrictions of the frame, discussing literary works previously not studied as framing narratives, including both fictional and non-fictional, poetic and prose works. The contributions examine, thirdly, how intertextuality permeates intratextuality in order to investigate the constitutive moments of “doing literature”. And fourthly, we conceptualise framing as a continuous activity—i.e. reframing—in the context of literary adaptations and translations, as well as the construction of a literary heritage. In the following, we will explain these four areas in more detail and introduce the individual insights in this curated collection.
New terminology
The composite ‘Framing Narratives’ has been less often used than frame story/stories or similar terms in narrative studies. In his contribution, Johannes Stephan introduces the concept from multiple angles, emphasising the heuristic value of the framing metaphor for early Arabic prose works; in turn, he delineates that the study of complex narrative works in Arabic informs our perspective on narrative framing.
Accordingly, all of the contributions assembled under “framing narratives” make deliberate use of the participle “framing”, as it indicates both the possible framing quality that narratives offer and the framing of narrative(s). In other words, “framing narratives” implies that narratives frame and are also being framed. Using the concept of framing in a bi-directional fashion, we maintain an openness regarding whether the textual part that frames or the enframed parts must, in fact, be narrative, in any strict sense of the word, or whether a new category needs to be devised. In this sense, Simon Godart suggests reading the notion of the fable/fabula in the context of René Descartes’ work as a framing device, capturing the philosopher’s methodological scepticism.
Conflicting metaphors
By confronting the various implications of the metaphorical setting of (outer narrative) “framework” and (inner narrative) “work”, our collaboration investigates the roles that presenting, shaping, introducing, and commenting on texts and narratives play in the constitution of the literary. The concept of (narrative or textual) frames tends to evoke strictly formal and epistemological, often hierarchical dichotomies of “inside” (intradiegetic, embedded) and “outside” (extradiegetic, embedding) or “below” (diegetic, primary) and “above” (metadiegetic, secondary; Full reference in Zotero Library and Full reference in Zotero Library, Full reference in Zotero Library, Full reference in Zotero Library), artistic text and non-text Full reference in Zotero Library, proper work (ergon) and supplement (parergon) Full reference in Zotero Library, text and paratext (Full reference in Zotero Library and Full reference in Zotero Library), mise en abyme and mise en cadre Full reference in Zotero Library, and so forth. These dichotomies may suggest static models, serving images of rectangular picture frames or equally self-contained balloons (as in Full reference in Zotero Library). Especially the textual temporalities of both levels of framing narratives seem to be preconceived through orderly, linear, and consecutive readings, the logic of which follows mainly the structure of the modern European novel—a presupposition that does not apply to nonlinear literary (and non-literary) forms, namely collages, encyclopaedic writings, or poetic anthologies. In particular, the latter serves as evidence that any metaphorical description of the inner relations between different textual layers involves a shared element (i.e. tertium comparationis).
When the frame and the framed converge, their expressed difference is only established in relation to the ensemble they collectively create. In revisiting adaptable expressions for this relationship, the insights assembled here attempt to transcend the static dichotomy of inside and outside by relying on the gerund form (“framing”). This indicates that the presumed synchronicity of the image-frame relation is rendered complicated by the fact that there is a movement of reading from the outside into the centre of the text, while the framing device simultaneously never ceases to frame what surrounds it.
Contact zones
Challenging the bias of the modern European novel, our rethinking of the relationship between frame and work suggests the apprehension of framing as the establishment of different temporal zones, accompanied by different positions of perception and/or utterance. For instance, readers are confronted with paratextual, metatextual, or metanarrative moments, in which authors, editors, or publishers, commentators, narrators, or characters anticipate and introduce the (enframed) work by telling the story of its creation, residing themselves in intradiegetic liminal spaces of a contingent and ambiguous nature. In these threshold zones, the world of the book, the world of the text or narrative, and the world of the story collide, allowing readers to select their particular apprehension/interpretation of the work. These contact zones can be conceived of as sites of specific forms of heteroglossia Full reference in Zotero Library, where different modes of communication interact. Hence, framing narratives do not only introduce texts but situate them within a web of traditions, textual practices, readers, authors, redactors, and editors.
The relationship of the “frame” and the “enframed”, thus, reduplicates the intertextual and transtemporal dependencies of both “doing literature” and belonging to “temporal communities”. Mahmoud Al-Zayed introduces the variegated framings of Mahasweta Devi’s novel Bashai Tudu (2002) as cases of reanthologising and translating, thereby mediating between historical contexts, languages, and audiences. This framing, Al-Zayed explains, resonates with the intratextual makeup of Bashai Tudu.
Hanan Natour identifies the literary reuse of premodern narrative material, primarily the Ayyām al-ʿarab trope (the early arab battles), in a novel by the Tunisian Muṣṭafā al-Kīlānī (b. 1953). She explores how an intertextual framing activity operates on different planes in his work, thereby illustrating the transtemporal connectivity of literature and the construction of a modern literary heritage.
Beyond Scheherazade
Frequently mentioned as an early culmination point of the frame tale’s long history (The Thousand and One Nights), the Arabic tradition will serve as a beginning for our interdisciplinary endeavour. Premodern Arabic manuscripts, indeed, contain multiple variants of narrative framings; for example, to quote authorities, to illustrate problems, to include multiple voices, which form a community, or to juxtapose diverse textual material or different accounts of same or similar events.1Apart from the forthcoming special issue by Full reference in Zotero Library, only very few contributions to the study of frame narratives in the Arabic tradition, notably van Full reference in Zotero Library and Full reference in Zotero Library, suggest an expansion of the concept. All these are strategies that go far beyond the often-mentioned dynamics of Scheherazade’s discourse and fictional narrative in any strict sense of the word. At the same time, the study of various forms of framing will serve to recontextualize critically the classical frame narrative prototype which has been developed through the study of the Canterbury Tales, The Decameron, and, of course, the Thousand and One Nights as the prototype for a narrative mise en abyme.
Asmaa Essakouti proposes a re-reading of the famous Maqāmāt by Abū Muḥammad al-Qāsim al-Ḥarīrī (d. 1122 CE) in focussing on its qualities of “framing narratives”. She analyses the multi-narratorial setting as a well-structured entanglement of three different semantic layers, which share the topic of presenting language and adab (classical Arabic term for literary culture with an ethical dimension) as a means for both deception and exposure.
Insights
René Descartes employs the term ‘fable’ or ‘fabula’ in numerous instances throughout his work, yet he never provides an explicit account of his understanding of the term. In my paper, I aim to establish an understanding of this usage in relation to the overarching theme of framing narratives. I highlight that, despite Descartes’s texts generally…
The theory of frame narratives emerged to discuss modern Western fictional prose, often using the ‘Thousand and One Nights’ as a prime example. However, the Arabic literary tradition, especially before the age of print, provides a rich field to explore and expand this concept. Since the eighth century CE, Arabic writers and storytellers have created…
This insight examines the multiple forms of framing the translated book Bashai Tudu has undergone, demonstrating that (re)framing is an activity that operates in and outside the text. These acts of reframing take the form of re-anthologisation, republication and translation, generating new (literary) contexts and audiences. Framing through paratextuality and intertextuality alongside extratextuality is closely…
In this insight, the literary device of framing is used to shed light on the systematic structure of al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt (hereafter, Ḥarīriyya). The work has been criticised by modern scholars for being fragmented, short-breathed, and episodic. In contrast, I argue that all fifty episodes of the Ḥarīriyya are part of a symmetric, well-devised structure, which…
Theories of narrative framing often resort to the Arabian Nights as a prime example of how frame tales and embedded tales interact. This contribution aims to move beyond the classical understanding of narrative framing by exploring a contemporary Tunisian example. In his novel Mayār: sarāb al-jamājim thumma māʾ [Mayār: The Mirage of Skulls, then Water]…
Responses
Narrative theory developed in relation to the modern Western novel, although its insights have been productively applied to all sorts of objects. This response proposes a narratological account of Western epic on two levels: it seeks to understand this pre-modern genre from a narratological perspective, and it also reads epic as articulating its own discursive…
As Simon Godart’s analysis of the status of fabula has shown, the fabulous aspect in Descartes’s concept of mundus is so crucial that much effort has been invested in superseding it in order to arrive at the Ego’s infallible certainty. In Godart’s reading, one could say that Descartes’s Ego ought to devour the lesson of…