The Knausgård Universe: Contextual Narratology and Slow Narrative Dynamics

Abstract

The current debate on slowness and narrative offers an ideal opportunity to re­consider the structuralist aversion to pragmatics and context. The article argues that a well-constrained approach to context is possible if we revise the concept of narrative dynamics to include transtextual and transactional dimensions; this theo­retical contribution to contextual poetics sheds new light on dialogical constella­tions in narrative fiction, e.g. the interdependencies between Karl Ove Knaus­gård’s ‘slow’ autofiction and the autobiographical novel October Child (2021) by Linda Boström Knausgård.