A Study On Jan Alber’s Unnatural Narrative Theory

As one of the representative scholars of the unnatural narrative theory, Jan Alber has unique insights in it. Based on natural narratology, possible world theory and postmodern poetics, Alber puts forward the definition of unnatural narrative, i.e. "The term unnatural denotes physically, logically, and humanly impossible scenarios and events", Which differs from the definition of other unnatural narratology scholars represented by Richardson. The core of Richardson’s unnatural narrative definition is"unnatural", while the core of Alber’s definition is "non-natural". The basis of Richardson’s theory is the art characteristic of texts(antimimetic), while the basis of Alber’s theory is the reader’s subjective cognition(impossible). The text features of the unnatural narrative theory of Alber are embodied in the narrators,characters,scenes and plots of fiction and drama, involving most animal fables, realism novels,magic novels, modernism novels and postmodernism novels. On the one hand, this shows that his definition is too broad and slightly loose. Perhaps it is not conducive to the in-depth development of unnatural narratology. On the other hand, Alber sums up the regulated "unnatural" narrative of the traditional literature genre and the"unnatural" narrative of later literature that has not been regulated in the traditional literary type. Furthermore, from the perspective of cognitive narratology, he puts forward nine reading strategies, which compromises "natural" and "unnatural". It has a certain reference value, which is helpful for different readers to understand unnatural narrative texts. In a word, the unnatural narrative theory of Alber enriches the theoretical framework of unnatural narratology, inspires the study of the post-classical narrative theory and makes up for the shortcomings of classical narrative theory, which deserves to be affirmed, and to be discussed furtherly.