Dorrit Cohn, The Distinstion of Fiction 도릿 콘 픽션, 논픽션

 

Dorrit Cohn, The Distinstion of Fiction, Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999, pp.109-131.
  >>>>>구글 북스에서 97~203페이지는 미리보기에 표시되지 않음;;;;
  http://books.google.co.kr/books?id=5Zpq0Rmm7hQC&pg=PP3&hl=ko&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

nonfiction으로 검색

 

 

 "A Novel" - that adopt the contradictory practice of naming their fictional self-narrators after their authors, thereby effectively ambiguating the distinction between fiction and nonfiction for sefl-narrated lives. 24

 

24. See Jonathan Wilson, "Counterlives : on Autobiographical Fiction in the 1980s."

 

 

 

 

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https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/modern_fiction_studies/v045/45.4phelan.html

 

 

Book Review The Distinction of Fiction Theory and Cultural Studies Dorrit Cohn. The Distinction of Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999. ix + 197 pp. Dorrit Cohn's main purpose in this engaging book is twofold: first, she disputes the belief, now widely held in the wake of poststructuralism and postmodernism, that there is no tenable (특정 기간 동안) 유지되는 distinction between fiction and nonfiction. Second, she locates that distinction in differences of narrative technique and the kinds of representation these techniques make possible. Along the way, she offers some very fine analyses of a range of narratives from Freud's case histories to Tolstoy's War and Peace, and she offers some suggestive insights into other theoretical issues, such as unreliable heterodiegetic이종서사/이종제시 narration and the relation between technique and the policing function of the novel. Although Cohn's case is somewhat limited by the form of its own presentation--the book is a collection of related essays rather than a single, sustained argument--The Distinction of Fiction is an important contribution to narrative theory and a salutary intervention in the debate about the relation between fiction and nonfiction. The book consists of ten essays, eight of which have appeared in earlier versions in various journals and edited volumes. Chapters 1 and 2 provide the theoretical basis for Cohn's case that fiction and nonfiction, especially history, are distinct kinds of writing. Chapters 3 through 6 [End Page 1102] examine individual narratives that either appear to challenge Cohn's position or distinctively illuminate it: Freud's case histories, Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, Hildesheimer's Marbot, and Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians. Chapter 7 shifts the focus back to theory, as Cohn identifies specific "signposts of fictionality," that is, features of fiction that cannot be found in historical narrative. Chapters 8 through 10 shift once again to text-specific arguments as Cohn makes a case for the unreliability of Mann's heterodiegetic narrator in Death in Venice; discusses the incorporation of historical figures and objects into the fiction of War and Peace; and analyzes the problems with Foucauldian approaches to narrative technique by D. A. Miller, Mark Seltzer, and John Bender. Defining fiction as "literary nonreferential narrative," Cohn locates its distinctiveness in three signposts. First, fiction can be understood by reference to the relationship between two levels of analysis--most often called story and discourse--while understanding history requires understanding an additional relationship, that between story and reference to the historical record. Cohn's argument that Freud's case histories are nonfictional is implicitly tied to this signpost, as is her conclusion that the status of Proust's narrative is ultimately ambiguous. Second, fiction enjoys a freedom of focalization that history does not: fiction, unlike history, can authoritatively represent the inner thoughts, feelings, and consciousness of characters without the mediating consciousness of an external narrator. Cohn puts this claim in another, especially intriguing(특이하거나 분명한 해답이 없어서) 아주 흥미로운 way: all narrators of historical texts, however magisterial their command of the historical record, are homodiegetic--and thus bound by the limits on homodiegetic narrators. Her chapter on Waiting for the Barbarians, which argues for our understanding that novel's simultaneous present-tense narration as a viable option for fictional narrative, makes a closely related point. Third, fiction, unlike referential narrative, allows for unreliable narration, that is, a disjunction between the norms of the author and those of the narrator the author creates. Cohn's discussion of unreliability in Death in Venice is a worthwhile extension of this case. Cohn's argument is a welcome intervention in the debate about the relation between fiction and nonfiction because it shifts the terms of that debate. The case against the distinction has focused on nonfiction and has successfully cast doubt on our traditional understanding of [End Page 1103] its connection to reality and truth by pointing out nonfiction's inevitable selectivity and its inescapable commitment to ideological beliefs. Add to these points Hayden White's emphasis on the power of narrative form to shape the presentation of evidence and, voilà!--nonfiction seems to be fiction by another name. Cohn, however, is saying, in effect, "not so fast; if we shift our focus to fiction, we can still see that it is a distinct kind--even if we grant the recent revisions in our understanding of nonfiction." Cohn argues with clarity, learning, and patient logic, and, hence, with great effectiveness. Nevertheless, I'm not entirely persuaded. My hesitation is not about the distinction itself--it seems to me that, regardless of what we as individual critics and readers say about our theoretical positions, in practice we all observe the distinction between fiction and nonfiction--but about locating that distinction in any signpost other than the different referentiality of fiction and nonfiction. I can imagine historians finding effective uses of internal focalization and even of unreliable narration in order to tell the story behind certain enigmatic events. More generally, I think it unwise to conclude that any narrative technique must be restricted to one side of the fiction/nonfiction divide--just as I join Cohn in thinking that it is a mistake to assume any one-to-one correspondence between a technique and an ideological effect, an argument she makes in her critique of the Foucauldian critics. Some techniques, especially the ones Cohn identifies, have traditionally been associated with fiction and others with nonfiction, but the history of the two categories shows that there's been much two-way traffic across the border. Consequently, I think that the distinction is not finally to be found in textual properties but in the extratextual matter of claims about reference. But Cohn's analyses are sufficiently sharp and compelling to make me question this assertion--and to deepen my appreciation for the distinctive effects of those techniques she identifies as signposts of fictionality. James Phelan Ohio State University

 

 

도릿 콘의 주 목적

첫째, 포스트구조주의와 포스트모더니즘에 널리 퍼져 있던 - 픽션과 논픽션의 지속적인 경계는 없다.
톨스토이의 <전쟁과 평화> 케이스 스터디..

픽션과 논픽션을 나누는 데 있어 중요한 저서

 
10개의 에세이로 구성됨

챕터 1과 2 - 이론적 기반 / 픽션과 논픽션이 구별되는 종류의 글쓰기라는 콘의 케이스를 위한
챕터 3부터 6 - 개인적인 내러티브들. Freud의 케이스..
챕터 7 - 다시 이론으로  <베니스에서 죽다> <전쟁과 평화>

픽션을 "문학적인 비지시적 내러티브(literary nonreferential narrative)"라고 규정하면서, 콘은

픽션은 스토리와 담화라는 두 개의 층위에서 레퍼런스로 이해된당..

역사는 역사적인 기록이라는 추가적인 레퍼런스 필요..

둘째, 픽션은 초점화가 자유로운데 논픽션은 안그렇다.
픽션은 역사와는 달리, 작가 마음대로 내적인 통찰력, 생각, 감정, 캐릭터의 의식적인 것을 표현 가능하다 외적인 나레이터의 의식적인 매개 없이도.

역사적인 텍스트의 모든 나레이터들은 homodiegetic 동종제시..

 
셋째로, 픽션은, 지시적인 내러티브와는 달리, 믿을 수 없는 나레이션, 즉, 작가의 규범과 작가가 만들어낸 나레이터의 규범 사이의 분열

 

리뷰 쓴 사람 생각 >>> 근데 역사가들도 내적인 초점화나 믿을 수 없는 나레이션을 하지 않아? (역사가들도 어느 정도 픽션적이나는 뜻)