Open AccessLiterature Review on Unnatural Narrative Theory
Author(s) -
Sufen Wu
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of social science studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2329-9150
DOI - 10.5296/jsss.v8i2.18999
Subject(s) - narrative , narrative criticism , narratology , popularity , narrative network , epistemology , criticism , narrative psychology , literary theory , sociology , narrative inquiry , psychoanalysis , literary criticism , literature , psychology , philosophy , art , social psychology
Unnatural narrative becomes a popular theory in literary criticism. In 2016, No. 4 issue of Style is a special issue on Brian Richardson’s Target Essay “Unnatural Narrative Theory”. Narratologists such as Marie-Laure Ryan, Shen Dan, James Phelan have responded actively to this new paradigm in narrative theory. In spite of its popularity, unnatural narrative remains controversial because of its diversified definitions, the hard-to-identified manifestations of unnaturalness, and its various interpretive strategies. Accordingly, this paper tries to comb the existing literature and provide a systematic review on the definitions, the manifestations, and the interpretive strategies of unnatural narrative theory.