Franz Karl Stanzel

Franz Karl Stanzel (* August 4, 1923 in Molln ) is an Austrian Anglist and literary scholars.

Stanzel worked after his studies in Graz with Herbert Koziol and after his habilitation in 1955 on a lectureship in Göttingen. In 1959 he was appointed to a professorship ( Ordinary ) in Erlangen, Germany, 1962 to the Koziol - successor in Graz. Today he is an emeritus professor of English at the Karl- Franzens- University of Graz.

Since the 1950s, Stanzel developed an analytical typology for the study of narrative perspective of narrative texts. Its Typological model of narrative situations ( despite frequent criticism ) taught in the German language as before as part of introductory courses in the analysis of narrative texts for students of philological subjects ( see, for example, the introduction of Ansgar Nünning ). Only since the late 1990s, there is a stronger competition from the narrative model of the French narratologists Gérard Genette in Germany.

Stanzel is the history of science alongside Kate Hamburger and Eberhard Lammert. He was strongly influenced by the Anglo - American tradition ( Percy Lubbock, Melvin Friedman ). The basic model his narrative typology comes from the Habilitationsschrift The typical narrative situations in the novel (1955 ) was revised under the influence of modern linguistics, and published in 1979 in his theory of narrative (2nd revised edition 1982). A strong international rezipierte English translation entitled A Theory of Narrative published in 1984 by Cambridge University Press.

The narrative model presented by Stanzel is characterized by three so-called narrative situations: the Icherzählung ( here the narrator is both protagonist at the action level of the story - example: Thomas Mann's Confessions of Felix Krull ); the authorial narrative situation ( here is the narrator, who may well also with ' I ' speak up, none of the acting figures but is above the narrated world, therefore the author closer ( ' authorial '), and commented as authority the fictional world - example: Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship ); and the personal narrative situation (there seems to be no narrator, the fictional world is portrayed through the eyes of one or more figures, often experienced with the use of speech or interior monologue - example: Hermann Broch's Death of Virgil ).

The three narrative situations are designed as typical in anticipation of the prototypical categories of cognitive linguistics: individual novels correspond only partially a typical narrative situation or mix several of these in their text. The narrative situations ( the typological circle) arranged in a circle to show that there are all possible forms of the narrative in the history of literature, and that the fields between narrative situations merge. Thus, the peripheral first-person narrator (eg Serenus Zeitblom in Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus ) is a first-person narrator, which is only marginally more active as an acting person and therefore already approaching the function of an editor and subsequently of an authorial narrator.

In the revised form of the theory in the theory of narrative, the three narrative situations are combined with three axes., - ( Non-identity of the realms between narrator and character world identity) associated Thus the Icherzählsituation with the axis person the constitutive feature of Icherzählsituation is that it is placed on the type circle around the pole identity of the realms. The authorial narrative situation is through the pole outside perspective axis perspective constituted (external vs. internal perspective. ); the personal narrative situation through the pole axis of the reflector mode ( narrator - vs. reflector mode)., Which is based among other things on linguistic insights of the Germanic linguist Roland Harweg distinction between emic and etic text beginnings based distinction between narrator and reflector mode set at the time a substantial extension of narrative theoretical findings; they developed earlier distinctions between telling ' and showing ( Percy Lubbock ) and explains the existing only since the late 19th century personal narrative situation as an illusion immediate participation in events by eliminating an urgent itself as a mediator in the foreground narrator.

In addition to his narratological research FK Stanzel also has important work in the research on stereotypes ( imagology ) to the imperial monarchy historical backgrounds of Leopold Bloom in James Joyce's novel Ulysses, and for providing ( telegony - parthenogenesis, 2008) delivered.