The Dynamics of Narrative Form Studies in Anglo-Am... - (Transgeneric Narratology Applications To Lyric Poetry)

PETER HUHN
(Hamburg)
Transgeneric Narratology: Application to Lyric Poetry
1. Narrative Universals and Lyric Poetry
Narrating appears to be an anthropologically universal device utilized by

humans in all cultures and epochs within a wide spectrum of pragmatic
and artistic contexts for structuring experience, making sense of the world
and one's self as well as communicating such interpreted structures
through a sign system to others or to oneself4. The ordering function of
narrative primarily rests on the close combination of two distinct dimen-
sions—the dimensions, first, of sequentiality, i.e. the temporal organiza-
tion and concatenation of individual elements (existents and incidents2)
into some kind of coherence, and, second, of mediacy, i.e. the presentation
(and interpretation) of this sequence from a particular perspective. Such a
basic distinction of two dimensions as the constituents of narrative is shar-
ed by most narratological models3, variously termed—if with marginally
divergent definitions—e. g. as "story" (histoire) and "narrative" (recit)4,
"story" and "text"5, "story" and "discourse"6, orfabula and sjuzet1. For a
comprehensive modeling of narrative, one has to add a third dimension:
the act of articulation or narration8 which produces the mediated se-
quence in the first place, leaving more or less perceptible traces in its
form.
Copyright © 2005. Walter de Gruyter GmbH. All rights reserved.
1
Turner (1996); Wolf (2002: 23-24).
2
Cf. Chatman(1978).
3
Cf. e.g., Martin (1986: 81ff, 107ff.); Martinez/Scheffel (1999: 20ff.); Herman (2002:
13, 21 Iff.). A radically different approach is adopted by Fludernik (1996).
4
Genette(1980).
5
Rimmon-Kenan (2002).
6
Chatman(1978).
Tomashevsky (1965).
8
Genette(1980).
Pier, J. (Ed.). (2005). The dynamics of narrative form : Studies in anglo-american narratology. Walter de Gruyter GmbH.
Created from bham on 2023-11-11 20:49:27.
140 Peter Huhn
Traditionally, narrative theory and, more recently, narratology have

tended to restrict their focus exclusively to the analysis of narrative
(prose) fiction as that one genre essentially defined by the device of sto-
rytelling. In the last few years, however, an increasing number of studies
have started to advocate expanding the scope of narratology to other me-
dia, disciplines, and genres9, on the basis of the universality and ubiquity
of the practice of narration. In this paper, I will argue that, since lyric po-
ems generally feature the same fundamental constituents as narrative fic-
tion—referring to a temporal sequence of incidents (in connection with
existents), mediating it from a particular perspective, and indicating the
act of utterance or articulation through which the sequence is mediated in
the medium of a verbal text—narratological categories may profitably be
applied to the analysis of lyric poetry10. It is assumed that because of the
advanced methodology of narratology and the discriminatory capacity of
narratological terminology, such a transgeneric approach may provide a
fresh impetus to the deficient theory of poetry11 as well as suggest new in-
terpretive methods for the practical analysis of poems12. For this purpose, I
will proceed by giving an outline of the three fundamental narratological
categories of sequentiality, mediacy, and articulation and suggest specific
ways of applying and adapting them to poetry. The aim is not to subsume
poetry into narrative fiction, but to use their common features as a means
of exploring both the similarities and the differences between these two
broad genres and, specifically, of highlighting the distinctly poetic forms
and functions narrativity can adopt in lyric poems13. In this sketch of nar-
9
Cf. e.g., Nash (1990); Nünning/Nünning (2002).
So far, narrative theory has only been applied to epic or narrative poetry; cf. e.g., Kin-
ney (1992); Grossman (1998).
The fVuitfulness of such an approach is also suggested by Müller-Zettelmann (2000),

(2002).
The argument pursued in this paper is based on the work of the project group P6 "Nar-
ratological Poetry Analysis," conducted by Jörg Schönert and myself, which is part of
the Research Group "Narratologie," established and funded by DFG at Hamburg Uni-
versity since 1 April 2001 (see www.NarrPort.uni-hamburg.de'). See Hühn/Schönert
(2002), whose argument the present article seeks to expand and develop further. Cf.
also Huhn (2001), (2004).
Furthermore, it will also be part of this project to determine the limits of a narratologi-
cal approach to lyric poetry, i.e. describe the type of poem which does not lend itself to
such an analysis.
Transgeneric Narratology: Application to Lyric Poetry 141
rative aspects in poetry, W. B. Yeats's "The Second Coming" (1920) will

serve as an illustrative example14:
THE SECOND COMING

1. TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
2. The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
3. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
4. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
5. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
6. The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
7. The best lack all conviction, while the worst
8. Are full of passionate intensity.
9. Surely some revelation is at hand;
10. Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
11. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
12. When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
\ 3. Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
14. A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
15. A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
16. Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
17. Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
18. The darkness drops again; but now I know
19. That twenty centuries of stony sleep
20. Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
21. And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
22. Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
2. Basic Features of Lyric Poetry
Before this transgeneric project can be undertaken, a brief remark about

the problem of delimiting the corpus of poetry is necessary. Attempts to
define lyric poetry systematically and theoretically as a distinctive genre
after the model of drama or narrative have failed to produce satisfactory

results15. But this dilemma can be resolved if one adopts a more pragmatic
approach, drawing on the actual common practice of literary histories and
anthologies as a criterion for classifying texts as poems and ascribing
them to the genre of lyric poetry, a practice which will be subject, of
course, to historical change as well as to cultural variation. Recent critics
14
Yeats (1983: 187).
15
Cf. e.g., Wolf (1998: 261ff.); Müller-Zettelmann (2000); Warning (1997: 18).
142 Peter Huhn
have suggested delimiting the range of lyric poems not by systematic clas-
sifications and theoretical definitions, but rather by a cluster of features
which constitute family resemblances, such as the tendency to brevity,
heightened artificiality, self-referentiality, subjectivity, and deviation as
well as the production of unstable illusion16.
One such prominent feature of what during numerous periods of Eng-
lish literary history used to count as lyric poetry consists in an emphatic
double referentiality of artistic language17: poems simultaneously establish
a textual signified and refer to the materiality of the signifier by overcod-
ing language in its phonetic, syntactical, metrical, and tropical (etc.)
structures18. Although double referentiality is fundamentally characteristic
of all verbal art-genres, lyric poetry can be seen to enhance and function-
alize material self-referentiality to an exceptionally high degree. In addi-
tion, self-referentiality in poetry is not restricted to the material signifier,
but also frequently extends to the semantic and thematic dimension,
namely as the constitution of the self through poetic utterance. For in most
periods, poetry functions as a specific medium for the self-articulation and
self-stabilization of the subject19.
3. Sequentiality in Poetry
The dimension of sequentiality is an aspect of the poetic text for which the
interpretive categories offered by existing models of poetry analysis have
proved particularly unsatisfactory20. To this aspect, namely the question of
how poems organize their syntagmatic coherence, narratological concepts
provide a more differentiated approach than hitherto available by speci-
fying the techniques employed by poetic texts for connecting the elements
into a causal, temporal, or otherwise "motivated" string, creating what
may be called a poetic plot. Plots in poetry are typically constituted by
mental or psychological incidents such as perceptions, imaginations, de-
sires, anxieties, recollections, or emotions and their emergence, develop-
16
Cf. esp. Burdorf (1997); Wolf (1998: 261-267); Muller-Zettelmann (2000: 73-139);
17
Cf. Easthope (1983); Forrest-Thomson (1978); Huhn (1998).
Cf. Jakobson (1960) and his notion of the dominance of the "poetic function" as a sig-
nificant feature of poetry.
19
Cf. Spinner (1975); Müller (1979); Huhn (1995).
Most handbooks of poetry analysis do not address this question at all or only very obli-
ment, and decisive change. For an explicit construal of the syntagmatic

structures informing the sequential dimension in poetry (as well as in nar-
rative fiction), I will draw on concepts from cognitive linguistics and cog-
nitive psychology. The underlying premise of such an approach consists
in the notion that it is only through the paradigmatic reference to extra-
textual contexts and to world knowledge, i.e. to cognitive schemata al-
ready familiar and meaningful, that readers can make sense of texts21. The
term world knowledge comprises culturally specific patterns from general
experience as well as intertextual references to literature (and other arts).
Accordingly, the analysis of the sequential structure of poems will attempt
to reconstrue the schemata from experience or literature familiar to con-
temporary readers which can be shown to be relevant to the texts and en-
dow them with meaning22.
Such schemata serve to establish paradigmatic relations, i.e. equiva-
lences, among textual elements, thereby making it possible to select and
group individual incidents and existents and transform them systematical-
ly into a coherent and meaningful narrative sequence or plot. Two main
types of cognitive schemata can be distinguished: frames and scripts (or
scenarios). Frames designate the thematic or situational contexts or
frames of reference within which poems are to be read, as for instance
death, growing up, or sexual love23; scripts denote sequence patterns, i.e.
natural processes or developments, conventional series of actions, or
stereotyped procedures, usually in close connection with the relevant
frame, such as, to take up the examples given, dying as crossing the bor-
der between this world and another, unfamiliar one; personal growth as
the development from childhood to adulthood seen in a positive or nega-
tive light (gaining mature knowledge or losing spontaneous vitality, re-
spectively); or the formalized ritual of courtly love barring the
gratification of the lover's desires. Whereas identifying the appropriate
frame enables the reader to connect various elements in different parts of
the text and interpret a poem (like any other text) in terms of its situational
and thematic significance and coherence in a primarily static respect, re-
21
Cf. e.g., Culler (1975: 139-160); Schank/Abelson (1977); Bruner (1990), (1991);
Turner (1996).
Cf. Herman (2002: 85-113) and Semino (1995a). Semino applies schemata to poems
without, however, using the concept of narrativity.
These examples of frames and the corresponding scripts refer to Tennyson's "Crossing
the Bar," Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality," and Marvell's "To His Coy Mis-
tress," respectively.
144 Peter Huhn
ferring the sequence of the elements to one or more scripts within such a
frame presents a specific means of modeling the dynamic, i.e. particularly
narrative, dimension of the text. It is a typical feature of literary texts, to
be sure, that they do not merely draw on existing schemata in a confirm-
ing sense, but tend to activate frames and scripts in order to deviate from
them in significant ways, in fact, in certain epochs highlighting such de-
viation as an index of literary quality24. Because of the convention of
brevity, situational abstractness, and generality25, poems are usually less
explicit and circumstantial than novels in presenting textual signals for the
activation of frames and scripts and therefore require greater effort on the
part of the reader to infer the relevant schemata from implicit indications.
For the same reason, narrative sequences in poems do not attain the de-
gree of circumstantial particularity and elaborateness conventionally real-
ized in fiction.
In Yeats's "The Second Coming," the frame is to be identified as a
general situation of political and social upheavals, implicitly activated by
metaphors of disorder and violence ("Mere anarchy is loosed upon the
world," "the blood-dimmed tide," 4-5)—implications with specific refer-
ence to Europe after the First World War, as can be inferred from the po-
em's publication date (1920) in combination with the cryptic reference to
the periodization of history (19-20: the termination of the Christian era
two thousand years after its beginning, i.e. Christ's birth: "the rocking
cradle"). As for the script, the poem explicitly enacts the search for the ap-
propriate sequence schema as a prerequisite for interpreting the incompre-
hensible. In the first section, the speaker obviously lacks a script, so that
in his helplessness vis-ä-vis his disturbing perceptions of the political situ-
ation, he is merely able to enumerate the incidents without really grasping
their significance. It is only at the beginning of the second section that an
appropriate script suddenly occurs to him and he can explicitly name it:
"the second coming," i.e. the apocalyptic Biblical prophecy about the type
and succession of events preceding as well as initiating the ultimate return
of Christ, especially ubiquitous violence and destruction and the resultant

triumph of evil26. Such conventional sequence patterns typically trigger
particular expectations about the ensuing incidents—in this case, the an-
ticipation of the approaching end of the world, the coming of a triumphant
Christ, and the last judgment. This script now seems to provide the speak-
For different forms of schema modification, cf. Cook (1994).
25
Cf. Müller-Zettelmann (2000: 73-83).
This is an intertextual script, taken from the Bible: Matthew 24: 3ff.
er with a satisfactory explanatory schema for the interpretation of the pre-

sent situation as the final phase of human history. The remainder of the
second section, however, radically violates these expectations and triggers
a completely different script, the pattern of a cyclical development, sug-
gesting not the end, but the indefinite continuation of history, in which
one epoch determines the next through what it suppresses, as the Christian
era suppressed man's animal nature and is therefore about to be succeeded
by the return of the repressed (19-20).
Equivalence among textual elements is further constituted by isotopies,
i.e. semantic or thematic features ("semes" or combination of "semes"27)
which recur in various words and expressions throughout a poem, thus es-
tablishing new connections within the text, adding layers of meaning, and
thereby frequently supporting the activation of frames and scripts. The
first section of Yeats's "The Second Coming" features a specific perva-
sive semic complex which can be circumscribed as "disintegration of or-
der," which recurs in the phrases "cannot hear" (2), "fall apart," "cannot
hold" (3), "anarchy" (4), "is loosed" (4, 5), "is drowned" (6) and "lack"
(7). This isotopy hints at the cause for the growing political disorder—the
inherent weakness of the old dispensation as the reason for its imminent
collapse, thus serving as an impetus for activating the apocalyptic script in
the speaker's mind. The dominant isotopy in the second section may be
identified as "terrifying incomprehensibility," recurring in and linking the
phrases "vast image" (12), "shape" (14), "gaze blank and pitiless" (15),
"darkness" (18), "nightmare" (20), and "what rough beast" (21). This iso-
topy signals the terrible nature of the coming new era, thereby disap-
pointing the expectations raised by the apocalyptic script of the imminent
closure of the plot of history.
In addition, the term event is introduced to refer to the decisive turning
point in the poem's sequentiality, a central feature of its narrative setup
closely connected with that which makes it worth telling ("tellability").
Eventfulness in the sense used here is specifically defined with reference

to the degree of deviation from the expected continuation of the sequence
27
Greimas (1966); Rastier (1972); Greimas/Courtes (1972). Greimas's originally restric-
tive definition of "seme" and "isotopy" has subsequently been expanded by himself,
Courtes, Rastier, and others to cover not only simple categorial features (such as "hu-
manness" or "gender"), but also more complex semiotic phenomena including thematic,
situational, and figurative categories which are apt to generate coherence through recur-
rence.
146 Peter Huhn
pattern activated by the text28. Since sequences can deviate from expecta-
tions to varying degrees, eventfulness has to be conceived of as grada-
tional. In "The Second Coming," the decisive turning point is of a
relatively high degree of eventfulness, since the visionary apparition
seems to prophesy a terrifying new beginning instead of heralding the
expected end of the world together with the establishment of God's king-
dom and the final destruction of evil. The expectation raised by the
apocalyptic script ("the second coming") is thus radically thwarted.
The overall organization on the discourse level of a poem (as of any
narrative text) will be called the plot. A plot is constituted by the selec-
tion, connection, and correlation of meaningful sequences as well as the
constellation and integration of schemata and equivalences. Plots are nor-
mally attributed to an agent (e.g. the protagonist) and derive their particu-
lar function from this attribution. Events form the crucial turning points in
the progression of plots and are in turn defined by these. In poetry, a plot
typically uses as its medium mental phenomena such as ideas, memories,
desires, emotions, imaginations, and attitudes which the agent in a
monological reflective and cognitive process ascribes to himself as his
plot and through which he can then define or stabilize his self-concept or
identity.
The overall plot of Yeats's "The Second Coming" results from the in-
teraction between the extradiegetic and the diegetic level29. On the level of
articulation, i.e. within the ongoing (extradiegetic) process of the speak-
er's reflections, the sequence is constituted by a succession of changing
states of mind: from the lack of understanding and the association of the
Biblical script to the unexpected emergence of a visionary prophetic in-
sight in which the speaker suddenly grasps the dynamic mechanism of
historical developments. As a consequence, he can narrate—on the story
level—the cyclical course of history: exclusion during one era (the exclu-
sion of the "beastly" dimension of human nature by Christianity in favor
of charity and compassion) ultimately leads to the return of the excluded
in the next era (brutality governing the coming dispensation). The plot of
"The Second Coming" is thus the specifically interactive correlation of
these two narrative sequences: on the higher level, the speaker's (or nar-
rator's) cognitive development from ignorance to insight; on the lower
28
Cf. Lotman's (1977) "transgression of boundaries"; Bruner's (1991) "canonicity and
breach." Cf. also Wolfs notion of the "narreme" (2002: 44-51).
29
Cf. the concept of "plot" in Brooks (1984).
level, the narration of the historical development as a cyclical process

propelled by the dynamic principle of exclusion and return.
4. The Dimension of Mediacy in Poetry
The syntagmatic and paradigmatic organization of poems in terms of nar-

rative sequences must be supplemented by the forms and levels of poetic
mediacy through which these operations are performed or, more precisely,
to which they are attributable. Two basic dimensions of mediacy are to be
distinguished: first, agents and levels of mediation, and second, types of
perspective. As for the first dimension, agents of mediation may be lo-
cated on four different levels: (a) the biographical author; (b) the textual
subject or subject of composition, i.e. the compositional organization of
the text30; (c) the speaker or narrator; (d) the protagonist (i.e. the main fig-
ure featured in the incidents narrated). In this context, reference to the em-
pirical author merely serves as a criterion for determining the historical
and cultural plausibility of frames and scripts. The textual subject (com-
monly called the "implied author") can best be re-conceptualized as the
"cognitive style" of the verbal and prosodic composition of the poem, the
construct to which the norms inherent in the stylistic, rhetorical, and tropi-
cal organization of the poetic text are attributable and which functions as a
means of backgrounding or foregrounding, of endorsing or exposing the
speaker's stance31. To the reader, this level offers a superior vantage point,
above the speaker's position, from which he may observe the latter's
"blind spots" and, in general, his personal (partly unconscious) predispo-
sitions and limitations32. To be sure, the distinction between the levels of
The "textual subject" differs from the other three agents of mediation, to be sure, in that
it is not a figure in the strict sense, but a construct. Nevertheless, this category has to be
listed here, since it presents an important level of mediacy for poetic texts.
The concept of the implied author has been criticized for its vagueness, inconsistency,
indeterminacy between structure and intentionality, etc.; cf. Bal (1981); Niinning
(1993); Kindt/Muller (1999). To avoid these associations, the term is here replaced by
"textual subject" or "subject of composition" to be understood as a construct, a struc-
tural or cognitive perspective, which does serve a useful interpretative purpose. It has to
be emphasized that the textual subject functions less as a positive norm (lacking a
voice, of course) than "negatively," as it were, through the perceived discrepancies
between the structure of the text and the propositional content of the utterance, i.e.
through textual inconsistencies and contradictions; cf. Niinning (1999: 64-65).
32
Cf. Huhn (1998).
148 Peter Huhn
textual subject and personalized speaker is always dependent on interpre-

tation and has to be determined on the basis of attribution.
One notorious problem specifically connected with the distinction
between these levels of narrator's voice and textual subject concerns the
question of the narrator's reliability or unreliability. The extensive narra-
tological discussion of this problem can profitably be employed for an
analysis of comparable aspects in poetic texts33. So far, the problem of
(un-)reliability has hardly been discussed systematically in poetry criti-
cism, though reading poems raises basically similar questions. Interesting-
ly, in attitudes towards poetry different conventions seem to obtain.
Whereas in narrative prose, homo- and autodiegetic narrators are liable to
be considered potentially unreliable as opposed to heterodiegetic ones,
which do not at all raise such doubts34, readers of poems with dramatized
speakers apparently are not normally inclined to question the veracity of
the statements. This may be due to the conventional expectation that lyric
poetry spoken by first-person speakers presents a subjective view anyway,
to which criteria of veracity or falsity do not apply. Nevertheless, raising
the question of (un-)reliability with lyric poems, defined by the specific
relation between the speaker's and the textual subject's perspectives, will
allow for a more differentiated analysis of the conditions and manifesta-
tions of subjectivity. It may be preferable, however, to avoid the moral
connotations of "unreliability" and use the more neutral terms "limitation"
and "limitedness" instead.
In Yeats's "The Second Coming," the particular composition of the
text permits the reader to observe the personal values, ideologies, and pre-
judices, the anxieties and desires which induce the speaker to interpret the
incidents in a certain way: the speaker first assesses contemporary events
in traditionally dualistic terms of good and evil, civilized and barbaric, ap-
parently favoring quasi-aristocratic values of a hierarchical and ritual or-
der (as can be inferred from the imagery of falcon and falconer and the
reference to "ceremony"); furthermore, when he then constructs a par-
ticular historical plot of cyclical progression and assumes the specific role
of a visionary narrator (self-confidently gifted with superior knowledge),
this may be interpreted as a compensation for his anomie, anxiety, and
desire by providing him at least with personal stability and cognitive cer-
tainty. However, to what extent the text of Yeats's poem is actually taken
33
Cf. Niinning (1999); Kindt/Müller (1999).
Cf. Dieter Meindl's contribution to the present volume: "Un-Reliable Narration from a
Pronominal Perspective".
to endorse the speaker's confident self-image or expose the arbitrariness

of his idiosyncratic reading of the signs as motivated by personal needs is
obviously a matter of interpretation.
The second dimension of mediacy concerns the two possible types of
perspective"5, namely the distinction between voice and focalization, be-
tween the agent responsible for the language used in the text, the verbal
utterance ("who speaks?"), on the one hand and, on the other, the position
that the perception and cognition are ascribed to, i.e. the deictic center of
the perceptual as well as cognitive, psychological, and ideological focus
on the incidents ("who sees?" or rather, more generally, "who per-
ceives?"). In poetry as in fiction, voice and focalization may coincide, as
they do in "The Second Coming," but they can also be distinct, as in the
case of retrospective homodiegetic narration, in which a subtle distance
between the narrating and the experiencing (perceiving or reflecting) self
typically occurs, a difference in temporal as well as cognitive and emo-
tional terms. The analysis of both dimensions of mediacy can be based on
Genette's approach and terminology as modified by his successors36.
These two sets of differential categories, agents or mediacy and types
of perspectives, allow for a more systematic discrimination and analysis
of the levels and forms of mediation than are traditionally distinguished in
poetry criticism. What can thus be described more precisely are such spe-
cifically lyrical phenomena as the suggested collapse or the emphatic sep-
aration of levels of mediation. Romantic but also modernist poems, for ex-
ample, often suggest the congruence of speaker and protagonist (of nar-
rator and character discourse) as well as the coincidence of voice and fo-
calization through simultaneous narration by using the present tense and
first-person pronouns, thus dramatizing the act of articulation. This im-
pression, however, has to be seen as a carefully contrived effect designed
to hide the manipulation and deliberate organization of a particular story
and create the illusion of immediacy, spontaneity, and thus authenticity
serving specific purposes which have to be analyzed in detail. The analo-

gous phenomenon in prose fiction, which Ansgar Nünning calls "mimesis
of narration," has only recently begun to receive detailed attention in nar-
ratological criticism: the forms and functions of dramatizing the act of
narration or articulation through staging a "storytelling scenario" and cre-
35
Genette (1980); Bal (1997); Rimmon-Kenan (2002); Chatman (1990); Jahn (1996).
"Perspective" is not used here as a synonym for "point of view," but as a superordinate
term covering the different basic modes of presenting objects, persons, situations, etc.
36
Cf. also Fludernik (2001).
150 Peter Huhn
ating the illusion of an on-going process at the extradiegetic level37. Dra-

matizing the act of articulation may be elaborated to such an extent that
the text in fact presents (i.e. narrates) the unfolding story of narrating the
story38.
Yeats's "The Second Coming" is a clear example of simultaneous nar-
ration and dramatized immediacy apparently designed to confer authen-
ticity and credibility on the speaker and his vision and endorse his insight.
Moreover, the poem exemplifies the phenomenon of dramatized articula-
tion or narration in that it enacts the process of gaining visionary insight
as an on-going "story": from the neutral registration of the as yet un-
interpreted contemporary situation (1-8) through the excited conception
of a possible meaningful interpretation (exclamations in 9-11) triggering
(11-13) a contrary vision (13-17) to the sudden insight into the historical
development leading to the present moment (18-20) and, finally, to the
prediction of the coming era as a result of the past (21-22). This "story of
narration" at the poem's extradiegetic level thus constitutes a narrative in
its own right, situated above the narrative mediated or told by the speaker
in his utterance39; it can be circumscribed as the "plot of history" which he
narrates simultaneously (referring to the present state of the world), retro-
spectively (in the reference to the past twenty centuries), and prospec-
tively (in the implications of the future as signaled by the "rough beast"
approaching and willing its "birth").
Such performative presentation with the concomitant illusion of im-
mediacy is a pervasive major strategy in poems of various periods from
the Metaphysicals and Romantics to the 1950s and the present day. Nar-
ratological concepts may help analyze and clarify its historically variable
functions, as in Donne's "The Sun Rising," Herbert's "The Forerunners,"
Marvell's "The Garden," Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight," Shelley's
"Stanzas Written in Dejection, Near Naples," Browning's "Two in the
Campagna," Larkin's "Dockery and Son," and Heaney's "Punishment."
At the opposite end of the scale are such diverse instances of divided or
37
Nunning(2001a).
Cf. the term Erzählgeschichte (story of narration) proposed by Schmid (1982: 95).
Nünning (200la), (200Ib) furthermore introduces the term "metanarration" for the ex-
plicit thematization or foregrounding of the narrative act and rigorously distinguishes
this phenomenon from "metafiction," the thematization of the fictionality of the nar-
rated story. See also his contribution to the present volume.
"The Second Coming" is not, however, an example of metanarration, as the speaker
does not explicitly thematize and comment on the act of narration (speaking or writing),
but merely enacts it, a process which manifests itself in the text of the poem.
multiple perspectivity as, for example, T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land,"

where voice and focalizer are totally fragmented and no unified coherent
speaking scenario emerges, Shelley's sonnet "Lift not the painted veil," in
which a particular experience is attributed by a heterodiegetic narrator to a
separate protagonist but presented through internal focalization, Robert
Graves's "Beauty in Trouble," which uses (self-)irony as a means of sepa-
rating voice and focalizer, or the Victorian dramatic monologue with the
deliberate dissociation of narrator and text subject40. How far such internal
divisions of perspective still suggest the mimesis of narration requires fur-
ther investigation.
5. Specific Forms of Narrativity in Lyric Poetry
The transgeneric application of narratological concepts to poetry is apt to

highlight the specificity of poetry, notably in the following five respects.
First, a spectrum of characteristic forms of "plotting"41 and narration
can be specified in which poetry tends to differ from prose fiction, such as
narrating from a position inside an ongoing story rather than from the end
(as in Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar"), telling a story prospectively (as in
Donne's "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"), simultaneously telling and
enacting a story (as in Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode"), and shaping the
sequence of events through narrating a story about them (as in Marvell's
"To His Coy Mistress" or Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality")42.
One particularly complex type of poetic plotting consists in shifting the
eventfulness from inside the narrative sequence or story level to the trans-
gression of this level, from a story event to what may be termed a "dis-
course event," as in Shakespeare's Sonnet 107, where the frame of the se-
quence is abruptly re-defined—from aiming at the friend's praise for his
continued friendship and patronage to the speaker's insistence on his own
superiority, on account of his immortalizing poetic gift, over the friend's
mortality; or in Peter Reading's multi-diegetic poem "Fiction," where the
40
For the application of deictic categories for a differentiation of voice and perspective in
poetry, cf. Semino (1995b).
41
Cf. Huhn (2004).
These are basic possibilities of narrating in prose fiction, too, of course (cf. Genette
[1980: 215ff.]), but their relative frequency seems to be different in poetry. Retrospec-
tive narration, for example, is much less common in poetry, whereas narrating from a
position before the end of the story appears to be particularly frequent, indicative of the
tendency of poems to functionalize the act of narration for the completion of the story.
152 Peter Huhn
motivation for a particular "story" development on one diegetic level

(taking someone to court) is metaleptically provided by an unrelated ac-
tion on another level (slanderous remarks in writing), which constitutes a
violation of expectation that has to be considered "eventful."
Second, characters in poetry (especially, of course, the speaker) are
identified not through name and description, as in fictional narratives, but
through their perspective, their interiority, and their personal narrative. In-
deed, one important function of narratives in poems is the constitution of
the speaker's or narrator's subjectivity and individuality, the definition of
his or her identity, by the self-attribution of a chain of events, of a "mental
story" (as in Yeats's "The Second Coming" or in Wordsworth's "I wan-
dered lonely as a cloud," where the speaker identifies himself as a vision-
ary and a poet, respectively). This tendency towards the performative pre-
sentation of character in poetry is particularly apparent in the form of the
dramatized act of articulation and simultaneous narration prevalent during
numerous periods (Nünning's "mimesis of narration").
The constitutive function of narration for personal identity—the phe-
nomenon of "self-narration"—has been widely discussed (in psychology
and literary criticism) for prose genres, specifically in what is called "life
writing"43, but so far not yet with respect to poetry44. This narratological
function may provide a new approach to the notoriously problematical re-
lation between lyric poetry and subjectivity and allow for a more specific
analysis of poems written in the first person and in the present tense.
Third, narrating in poetry is characterized by a marked preference for
the use of unusual tenses and moods: a tendency to employ second-person
narration (as in Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn"), the use of the impera-
tive mood in narration (as in Keats's "Ode on Melancholy") and negative
narration, i.e. relating events which did not occur (as in Larkin's "I Re-
member, I Remember"). Such forms also occur in narrative fiction45, but
in poetry their use seems both to be more prevalent and to occur earlier.
The possibly different functions as well as their particular historical de-
velopment clearly need more detailed investigation.

Fourth, narrative sequences in poetry frequently lack explicit circum-
stantial explanations and connections which are conventionally required in
43
Cf, e.g., Löschnigg (2001); Bruner (1990); Eakin (1999); Kerby (1991); Polkinghorne
(1988); Ochs/Capps (2001).
Examples would be the Romantics and as well as, more recently, the American confes-
sional poets (Robert Lowell, John Benyman, etc.).
45
Cf. Fludernik (1993), (1994a), (1994b).
novels and short stories. Not only do poems often present incidents and
figures in an abstract manner and without any reference to a concrete set-
ting (as in Wordsworth's "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal"), they can also
easily dispense with making explicit, and motivating, the transition be-
tween two points in time (as in Shakespeare's Sonnet 107, "Not mine own
fears ...," with its temporal gap between the first and second quatrains) or
from one thematic sequence to another (as in Shakespeare's Sonnet 94,
"They that have power to hurt," the abrupt shift to "summer's flower"). In
prose narratives, such devices start to occur in significant number in
avantgarde fiction, arguably partly as an import from the genre of lyric
poetry.
Fifth, the materiality and the formal structure of the poetic text
(sounds, rhythm, prosody, syntax, typography, etc.) may be exploited for
the additional modeling of narrative sequences, reinforcing, modifying, or
counteracting the semantic plot-development (as in Herbert's "Denial,"
Hardy's "The Voice," or Harrison's "Them & [uz]"). In such cases, for-
mal features specifically function as paradigmatic relations or equiva-
lences (in addition to semes and isotopies), establishing further links
among different parts of the text, thereby highlighting its narrative devel-
opment (as e.g., in "Denial," where the desired event, God's response to
the speaker's prayer, is prefigured on the sound level by the sudden ap-
pearance of the missing rhyme word in the final stanza).
These poetic specificities demonstrate, on the one hand, that applying
narratology to poetry analysis does not at all result in leveling the differ-
ences between poetry and fiction but, rather, is apt to foreground the spe-
cific features in which poems are distinct from novels—against their com-
mon background of shared basic structures. On the other hand, however,
the identification of such distinctly poetic manifestations of narrativity in
poems may—in a reversal of the analytical perspective—serve as a spe-
cific frame of observation for a fresh look at narrative prose fiction and
the analysis of typical forms of narrativity in particular cultures, epochs,
and authors.
154 Peter Huhn
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PETER HUHN

Transgeneric Narratology: Application to Lyric Poetry

1. Narrative Universals and Lyric Poetry

Narrating appears to be an anthropologically universal device utilized by

Traditionally, narrative theory and, more recently, narratology have

The fVuitfulness of such an approach is also suggested by Müller-Zettelmann (2000),

rative aspects in poetry, W. B. Yeats's "The Second Coming" (1920) will

THE SECOND COMING

2. Basic Features of Lyric Poetry

Before this transgeneric project can be undertaken, a brief remark about

after the model of drama or narrative have failed to produce satisfactory

sires, anxieties, recollections, or emotions and their emergence, develop-

ment, and decisive change. For an explicit construal of the syntagmatic

and thematic significance and coherence in a primarily static respect, re-

of Christ, especially ubiquitous violence and destruction and the resultant

er with a satisfactory explanatory schema for the interpretation of the pre-

Eventfulness in the sense used here is specifically defined with reference

level, the narration of the historical development as a cyclical process

4. The Dimension of Mediacy in Poetry

The syntagmatic and paradigmatic organization of poems in terms of nar-

textual subject and personalized speaker is always dependent on interpre-

to endorse the speaker's confident self-image or expose the arbitrariness

serving specific purposes which have to be analyzed in detail. The analo-

ating the illusion of an on-going process at the extradiegetic level37. Dra-

multiple perspectivity as, for example, T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land,"

5. Specific Forms of Narrativity in Lyric Poetry

The transgeneric application of narratological concepts to poetry is apt to

mortality; or in Peter Reading's multi-diegetic poem "Fiction," where the

motivation for a particular "story" development on one diegetic level

velopment clearly need more detailed investigation.

1993 "Second-Person Fiction: Narrative You as Addressee and/or Protagonist," in

1998 Fundamentals of the Art of Poetry (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press).

Schank, Roger C. / Abelson, Robert P.

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