Beschreibung:
Relevance and Narrative Research turns the vaguely defined evaluative tool “relevance” into an object of study, firmly situating questions of relevance in the context of narrative theory. It examines what relevance can do for narrative research and vice versa.
“Relevance” is one of the most widely used buzz words in academic and other socio-political discourses and institutions today, which constantly ask us to “be relevant.” To date, there is no profound scholarly conceptualization of the term, however, which is widely accepted in the humanities. Relevance and Narrative Research closes this gap by initiating a discussion which turns the vaguely defined evaluative tool “relevance” into an object of study. The contributors to this volume do so by firmly situating questions of relevance in the context of narrative theory. Briefly put, they ask either “What can ‘relevance’ do for narrative research?” or “What can narrative research do for better understanding ‘relevance?’” or both. The basic assumption is that relevance is a relational term. Further assuming that most (if not all) relations which human beings encounter within their cultures are narratively constructed, the contributors to this volume suggest that reflections on narrative and narrative research are fundamental to any endeavor to conceptualize notions of “relevance.”
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Dialectics of Relevance and Narrative Research
Matei Chihaia and Katharina Rennhak
Part 1. The Politics of Narrative Relevance
Chapter 1. The (Ir)Relevance of Narratology
Susan S. Lanser
Chapter 2. Disciplining Relevance: On Manifest and Latent Functions of Narratives
Andreas Mahler
Part 2. The Logic of Narrative Relevance
Chapter 3. Relevant Logics, Counterfactual Worlds, and the Understanding of Narrative
Luis Galván
Chapter 4. Relevance Theory and Literary Studies—and Some Thoughts on Paul Torday’s The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce
Carsten Breul
Chapter 5. Communication, Life, and Dangerous Things: On Relevance and Tellability in Pictures
Michael Ranta
Part 3. The Relativity of Relevance
Chapter 6. The Relevance of Irrelevance in Mimetic Narratives: Guess What…
Raphaël Baroni
Chapter 7. Narrating Random Probes: The Ideal of “Slice-of-Life”
Sebastian Domsch
Part 4. (Ir)Relevance and Narrative Genres
Chapter 8. Relevance Theory in Contemporary Narratology: Processing Meaning from Narrative Texts
Sonja Klimek
Chapter 9. “Less is More”: Narrative Strategies of Reduction and the Construct of (Ir)Relevance in the Works of Three French Minimalist Authors
Susanne Schlünder
Chapter 10. The Relevance of Narrative Theory for the Study of Short Fiction: The Case of First-Person Present-Tense Narration
Elke D’hoker
Index
About the Editors
About the Contributors