Episodisches Erzählen – Erzählen in Episoden. Medientheoretische Überlegungen zur Systematik, Typologie und Historisierung

Abstract

The article discusses episodic storytelling in narratological terms. The focus lies on those cases of episodic storytelling, in which a linear story is split into episodic entities by means of narrative and/or media-related caesurae. This episodic storytelling – we might speak of an episodic storytelling in a narrow, narratological sense – is systematically defined by characteristic techniques of narrative closure. It comprises two subtypes, a ‘storytelling in episodes’ versus a ‘proper episodic storytelling’, which – all interferences let aside – differ with respect to the stronger or weaker narrative autonomy of the individual episode. Both subtypes seem to have their own literary history at least since the European Middle Ages. Throughout the whole article, close attention is given to the (historically variable) media-related mechanisms which facilitate, regulate and restrict episodic storytelling.