Ist Erzählen graduierbar? Zur Problematik transmedialer Narrativitätsvergleiche

Abstract

Comparing the narrativity of different texts within a given medium usually implies a focus on the narrated and how the story is structured by the discourse. Comparing the narrativity of different media, on the other hand, requires both an examination of the way the story is presented as well as of questions of mediacy and narrative agency. Addressing the second topic, this paper seeks to classify transmedial comparisons according to their criteria for evaluating narrativity and to examine positions which regard literature as a medium possessing a higher degree of narrativity or in a stricter sense than film and drama. Wolf Schmid’s model of narrative constitution serves as a theoretical framework for the critical review of this claim, and the exceptional case of backward narration is discussed in exemplifying central points of the argument put forth here.