Wolf Werner Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media Studies in Intermediality 1

Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media

STUDIES IN INTERMEDIALITY (SIM)

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Executive Editor:Walter Bernhart, Graz

Series Editors:Lawrence Kramer, New York

Hans Lund, LundAnsgar Nünning, Gießen

Werner Wolf, Graz

The book series STUDIES IN INTERMEDIALITY (SIM), launched in 2006, is devoted to scholarly research in the field of Intermedia Studies and, thus, in the broadest sense, addresses all phenomena in-volving more than one communicative medium. More specifically, it concerns itself with the wide range of relationships established among the various media and investigates how concepts, of a more general character, find diversified manifestations and reflections in the diffe-rent media. The book series is related to, and part of, the activities of the Intermediality Programme of the Humanities Faculty at the Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz/Austria.

STUDIES IN INTERMEDIALITY (SIM) publishes, generally on an annual basis, theme-oriented volumes, documenting and critically as-sessing the scope, theory, methodology, and the disciplinary and in-stitutional dimensions and prospects of Intermedia Studies on an inter-national scale: conference proceedings, university lecture series, col-lections of scholarly essays, and, occasionally, monographs on per-tinent individual topics reflecting more general issues.

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2006

Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media

Edited by

Werner Wolf and Walter Bernhart

Cover-Illustration: Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts. Painting Turned Round (c. 1670-1675). Oil on canvas. 26 x 34 inches. Copenhagen, State Museum of Art

The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”.

ISBN: 90-420-1789-9©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2006Printed in The Netherlands

Contents

Preface .............................................................................................. vii

Werner Wolf Introduction: Frames, Framings and Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media ............................................................ 1

Framing in/through the Visual Arts

Anja Grebe Frames and Illusion: The Function of Borders in Late Medieval Book Illumination ................................................. 43

Vera Beyer How to Frame the Vera Icon? ........................................................... 69

Götz Pochat Framing, Actual and Virtual: The Crossing of St. Peter’s in Rome ....................................................................... 93

Patricia Allmer Framing the Real: Frames and Processes of Framing in René Magritte’s Œuvre ............................................................... 113

Daniel F. Herrmann Touching Upon Framing: Medial Conditions of Printmaking in Dieter Roth’s Komposition I-V (1977-1992) .............................. 139

Richard Phelan The Picture Frame in Question: American Art 1945-2000 ............. 159

Framing in/of Literary Texts

Werner Wolf Framing Borders in Frame Stories .................................................. 179

Haiko Wandhoff Found(ed) in a Picture: Ekphrastic Framing in Ancient, Medieval, and Contemporary Literature ......................................... 207

Christian Quendler Frame Analysis and Its Contribution to a Historical and Cultural Theory of Literary Fiction: A Comparison of Initial Framings in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy and Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans ............................. 229

Till Dembeck (Paratextual) Framing and the Work of Art: E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Prinzessin Brambilla .................................... 263

Werner Wolf Defamiliarized Initial Framings in Fiction ..................................... 295

Maria Stefanescu The (Dis)Continuity of Framings ................................................... 329

Margarete Rubik Frames and Framings in Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair .............. 341

Remigius Bunia Framing the End ............................................................................. 359

Framing in Film

Roy Sommer Initial Framings in Film .................................................................. 383

Erik Hedling Framing Tolkien: Trailers, High Concept, and the Ring ................ 407

Framing in Music

Michael Walter Framing and Deframing the Opera: The Overture .......................... 429

Walter Bernhart Narrative Framing in Schumann’s Piano Pieces ............................. 449

Notes on Contributors ..................................................................... 477

Preface

The initial idea for this book dates back to autumn 1994. During an excursion of the English Department of the University of Graz into the Styrian wine growing region, discussions with my colleague Hugo Keiper, to whom I am grateful for this initial ‘spark’, triggered my interest in the field of framing – an interest which then was still exclusively literature-centred. In the course of the following years the project to which this volume is dedicated received additional fuel from various sources and events, and was broadened to its present cognitive and intermedial dimensions. In particular, I would like to mention discussions with colleagues, including one of our specialists in cognitive linguistics, Annemarie Peltzer-Karpf, but above all with Walter Bernhart, to whom I am especially thankful for his untiring assistance and encouragement. A further incentive was the foundation of the ‘Faculty Programme Intermediality’ (a special field of teaching and research within the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Graz). All of this led to the realization of a long-planned international conference on ‘Framing in Literature and Other Media’. It was co-organized by Walter Bernhart, Michael Walter and myself and was held at our Department of English in June 2004. It is this conference which became the basis of the present volume, the first of the book series ‘Studies in Intermediality’.

Besides the persons already mentioned, the volume has benefited from the assistance of a number of people and organisations, whose support I hereby gratefully acknowledge, also on behalf of co-editor Walter Bernhart, who himself has contributed much more to it than his function of co-editor would suggest. Our thanks are especially due to my secretary Ingrid Hable for valuable work in the preparation of the manuscript and to Sarah Mercer for her careful proof-reading. For the logistic support of the conference we are indebted to the English

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Department of the University of Graz and to various technical and organizational assistants from whose help the present volume as the conference proceedings profited indirectly. We would also like to thank the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Graz under Dean Walter Höflechner and the Land Steiermark for their willingness to support the conference and in part also the present volume in spite of financial constraints. Last but not least, we would like to thank the conference attendants and the contributors to this volume, without whose interdisciplinary expertise a transmedial investigation of fram-ing borders in literature and other media would not have been possi-ble, for the frame of intermediality studies by far transcends what a single scholar can cope with.

Werner Wolf Graz, December 2005

Introduction

Frames, Framings and Framing Borders

in Literature and Other Media1

Werner Wolf

Over the past few decades it has become a received notion that there is no human signifying act, no meaningful perception, cognition and communication without ‘frames’ and that frames are practically every-where. Indeed, since the mid-1970s, when Erving Goffman’s influ-ential study Frame Analysis was published, the concept of the cogni-tive ‘frame’, which Goffman had taken over from Gregory Bateson (1955/1972; cf. Goffman 1974: 7), has become widely accepted in lin-guistics and related areas: especially in cognition theory, psychology and psychotherapy, artificial intelligence research, sociolinguistics and above all in discourse analysis2. The present volume is dedicated to the application of frame analysis to a field in which it has not found much attention to date, namely literature and other media, and fo-cusses on the coding of frames in ‘framing borders’ (in temporal me-dia notably on initial framings). The following “Introduction” aims above all at clarifying the theoretical basis of such an analysis. This means in particular elucidating the concepts of ‘frame’, ‘framing’ and ‘framing borders’ and also giving an overview of their most important functions in the interpretation of works of literature and other media.

1 Parts of this “Introduction”, which was not read at the conference ‘Framing in Lit-erature and Other Media’, are revised versions of the first two chapters of Wolf 1999a.

2 For a survey see Müller 1984, esp. ch. 3, Drew/Wootton, eds. 1987, Tannen, ed. 1993, and the excellent summary of almost all previous research in the field, MacLachlan/Reid 1994.

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1. Frame, framing, and interpretation

As a consequence of the wide-spread and interdisciplinary use of the term ‘frame’, it has acquired a plethora of divergent and occasionally conflicting meanings. ‘Frame’ is sometimes used in contradistinction to related terms, in particular ‘schema’ and ‘script’ (for overviews see McLachlan/Reid 1994: 2, Semino 1997: 128), but sometimes also as a synonym for these terms (as in McLachland/Reid 19943). Since by ‘script’ and ‘schema’ the majority of scholars refer to stereotyped everyday situations, which are not in focus in the present volume, we need not be concerned here with the distinction between these notions and ‘frame’. Instead, ‘frame’ shall be used in the following as a gen-eral term which refers to discursive exchanges as in the production and reception of literature and other media (it is in addition applicable to further cases, but these are outside the scope of this volume). How-ever, what does concern us is the general vagueness of the term ‘frame’ itself. Even from an otherwise excellent survey such as McLachland/Reid 1994 it remains unclear whether ‘frames’ are single or “bundles” of concepts (72), whether they are “metacommunicative” phenomena (or “metamessages” [94 and passim]), or whether they also include “experiential” elements and “structures of expectation” (65), to which the notion of ‘metaconcept’ cannot easily be applied. In addition, research is divided on the question whether frame-theory should be concerned with frames as static cognitive “storage systems” (sometimes related to stereotypes4) or with framing as “a dynamic activity” (75).

3 Rumelhart 1980, in his excellent introduction to schema (or frame) theory, warns against an indiscrimitate use of these and related terms as synonyms, yet seems to regard them as being “closely enough related that a discussion of any one of them will serve as an introduction to the others” (33).

4 Crystal 1987/1997: 417 defines frame from a linguistic point of view as “a knowl-edge structure which represents a situation which is predictable, or stereotyped”. Frame as a configuration of expectations which is stored in a schematic way and re-cognized in ‘stereotyped situations’ (“typisierte Situationen”) in a given context (Müller 1984: 42, cf. also Fludernik 1993: 446-449) also underlies Prince’s definition

Introduction: Frames, Framings and Framing Borders 3

In view of this diversity it is necessary to take a position in order to prevent the term from losing its heuristic potential. This can arguably be done on the basis of a functional view of the term, in which divergent further qualifications appear as facets of one and the same overall function in different subfields. As emerges from the title McLachland/Reid 1994, Framing and Interpretation, all of the diffe-rent approaches to ‘frames’ converge in one frame function, namely to guide and even to enable interpretation – be it with reference to every-day experience and communication or to medial performances, arte-facts etc. It is this interpretive function that justifies the description of

frames as meta-phenomena5. The presence of this function can, for instance, transform even an ‘ordinary’ concept such as the notion of ‘story’ into a frame or a metaconcept, depending on how ‘story’ is employed: such a transformation occurs when a notion such as ‘story’ is not used as a simple concept located on the same level as other notions within an utterance (as in “the woman had already told me that story twice during that day”) but as a ‘key’ to understanding a text as a narrative (as occurs when a text is classified in its subtitle as a ‘story’).

As far as the different qualities which have been attributed to the notion of ‘frame’ are concerned, one may say the following. As re-

gards the question as to whether frames are ‘metacommunicativeconcepts’ or not, the answer will depend on what phenomena one wants to include in the term: if it also refers to everyday experience, which is clearly not to be restricted to communication, this designa-tion is certainly too limiting. However, since interpretation always involves concepts, one can argue that frames as ‘keys’ to interpreta-

tion are at least ‘metaconcepts’: concepts that regulate the application

of ‘frame’ derived from Minsky 1975: “A set of related mental data representing various aspects of reality and enabling human perception and comprehension of these aspects” (Prince 1987: 33).

5 This can also be deduced, e.g. from Rumelhart’s description of ‘schemata’ (or frames) as “unarticulated theor[ies]” or “computer programs” (1980: 37, 39).

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of other concepts. At any rate, since the present volume is concerned with artefacts and as these can be conceived of as forms of cultural signification and communication using concepts, the idea of a frame as a metaconcept is certainly justifiable within our context.

The additional problem, namely whether a frame is a single (meta-)concept or a configuration of concepts, can be solved by claiming that a frame is, as a rule, designated by a single term and as such corresponds to one metaconcept but usually governs a plurality of sub-concepts and expectations.

The opposition ‘static, stereotypical vs. dynamic conception of frame’ can be solved by saying that on the one hand frames are cogni-tive guides of interpretation that are cultural constructs and hence have a certain historical and cultural flexibility according to different cultures and periods. They in particular depend on a period’s épistémè, norms, conventions and the totality of the “frames of reference” described by Hrushovsky as “basic unit[s] of semantic integration” (1984: 12). This ‘dynamic’ plasticity also applies to the modification of frames through personal experiences or cultural artefacts that open up new perspectives and contribute to the emergence of new frames. On the other hand, as acquired notions, frames have at least a relative stability and tend, in particular in everyday situations, towards stereotyping (otherwise they could not function as interpretive guides nor could they raise expectations). Therefore, as with the problem of regarding frames as either single metaconcepts or as a configuration of concepts, both views – the dynamic as well as the static view – appear to have some relevance and should be borne in mind simultaneously.

Lastly, the question whether frames should be investigated as cog-nitive givens or whether cognitive framing activities should be in focus (which is clearly favoured by Reid 1992, and McLachlan/Reid 19946) can be answered in a similarly nuanced way: there can be no framing activity without previously given frames which are applied,

6 For the disagreement in this matter see Tannen 1993b: 18f.


modified, rejected or supplemented by other or even entirely new frames. Thus, both aspects are again justified – and this is particularly true when dealing with artefacts. For on the one hand artefacts, like other signifying practices, are based on given frames, but on the other hand artefacts can also be results of, or elicit, activities that lead to the emergence of new frames (e.g. new literary genres). In spite of this ambivalence a practical consideration may induce one to bracket framing activities to a certain extent, namely the fact that one cannot easily observe the cognitive framing taking place in recipients’ minds (let alone that of recipients from past epochs), whereas cultural ‘frames of reference’ as givens are readily available to research.

Thus, ‘frames’ in the sense of ‘cognitive frames’ may, in a general way, be described as culturally formed metaconcepts, most of which possess a certain stability even if modified or new frames can emerge in certain circumstances; these metaconcepts enable us to interpret both reality and artefacts and hence other concepts that can be applied in perception, experience and communication. Frames are, therefore, basic orientational aids7 that help us to navigate through our experien-tial universe, inform our cognitive activities and generally function as preconditions of interpretation. As such, frames also control the framed. Similarly to the physical frames surrounding paintings, frames, for instance, help to select (or construct) phenomena as form-ing a meaningful whole and therefore create coherent areas on our mental maps. Thus, frames are keys to abstract knowledge, to com-munication and pragmatic situations, but also to what is most interest-ing in the present context, namely to the understanding of literature and other media.

In highly stereotyped situations the appropriate frames will be more or less taken for granted, as such situations seem to call for cer-tain frames automatically as default settings (although in most cases some covert, implicit markers usually exist here, too). If, for instance, 7 Cf. Müller 1984: 44, who follows Winograd (1977: 4) in defining “FRAMES” as “‘a guide for structuring the processes of production and comprehension’”.

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someone working together with a colleague asks him or her a question immediately related to the work in progress, the frame is implied by this very situation (which in turn may have an office as its covert marker) and ‘goes without saying’, thereby rendering any further ex-plicit marking unnecessary. Yet, there are also more unusual situations that deviate from standard or everyday expectations and patterns and for which special (additional) agreements between ‘senders’ and ‘receivers’ have to be made and signalled. This is, for example, the case when certain utterances, such as are made in children’s role-play-ing or in drama, are to be understood in the sense of an ‘as-if’, as non-real, fictional utterances. Such cases do not go without saying but have to be marked in some way through interpretive, “metacommuni-cative [...] frame-setting message[s]” (Bateson 1955/1972: 190). These “messages” refer to previously encoded frames – or create new ones – and require adequate decoding if the situation is to be assessed cor-rectly. Interpretive codings of this kind are what I will here call

‘framings’8. Although there are no discourses and there is no under-standing without frame(s), there are, as these examples indicate, dis-cursive and other situations without (overt or explicit) framing(s). Framings may, thus, be defined as codings of abstract cognitive frames that exist or are formed within, or on the margins and in the immediate context of, the framed situation or phenomenon and – like the corresponding frames – have an interpretive, guiding and control-ling function with reference to it. Such coding can occur in an encod-ing activity of – in the terminology of communication theory – the ‘sender’, it can consist in a decoding activity of the ‘recipient’, or it can be part of the ‘message’ and its context; that is, it can occur as a

8 Goffman 1974 has amply commented on special frames implying some departure from normal, unmarked “primary frameworks” (21 ff.) – e.g. in games or fictions – and on the necessity to mark these cases with “keys”, or “keying” them (40 ff.). For another linguistic differentiation of ‘frame’ as opposed to the marking of frames in the act of ‘framing’ cf. also Müller’s discussion of Fillmore’s (1976) frame-semantics (“FILLMOREsche[...] FRAME-Semantik” [1984: 45]) or Tannen 1993a: 4, where “framing” is explained as a “means by which frames are created in interaction”.


“metamessage” (Tannen 1993a: 3; cf. also MacLachlan/Reind 1994: 93 and passim)9 in the form of a concrete, physical marker of, or ‘key’ to, a specific frame as an interpretive metaconcept. ‘Framings’ as parts

of ‘messages’ or artefacts thus denote not only frame-coding singletextual or contextual elements (e.g. the phrase ‘the incidents in this

novel are pure invention’ as part of a preface) but also the concrete spaces or parts of artefacts or their immediate surroundings, in which the coding of frames (optionally together with other messages) occurs (e.g., a preface in its entirety10). In all of these cases (whether sender-, recipient-, text-, or context-centred) the framing (similar to what it encodes, namely frames) is located on another logical and/or physical level than the framed11.

In some cases, this terminological distinction between ‘frame’ as an abstract cognitive metaconcept and ‘framing’ as activity and in particular a concrete coding of frames will, however, be difficult to maintain. This applies notably to the frames of ‘frame stories’ as well as to picture-‘frames’: both are typical ‘framings’, but the received term ‘frame’ will, of course, continue to be used. Yet, one should bear in mind that under frame-theoretical conditions a picture frame as well

as the frame of a frame story is a privileged place for the coding of cognitive frames, a place in which such codings can occur with par-ticular density or saliency.

9 However, neither Tannen nor MacLachlan/Reid distinguish between abstract cognitive frames and their coding in ‘framings’ and therefore do not restrict “meta-message” to what will be specified below as ‘(con)textual framings’.

10 As will be explained below, paratexts (such as prefaces) are indeed important instances of framings (notably in verbal media).

11 The hierarchy implied here has come under attack from a deconstructivist per-spective (see, e.g., Gibson 1996: 219-235) for which all distinctions between ‘levels’ – and in particular the differentiation between discursive and metadiscursive ones – is undesirable and should be replaced by the metaphor of the “rhizome” (Gibson 1996: 220). However, a normative denial of the possibility of distinguishing between fram-ing and framed is untenable as it would blatantly contradict what most literature (not only frame stories) and other media actually presuppose; and even the description of highly unconventional, ‘experimental’ texts which blur ‘levels’ would be impossible without reference to conventional distinctions.

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2. Frames and framings in the theory of literature and

other media: state of the art and aims of the present

volume

In linguistics, the concepts of ‘frame’ and ‘framing’ were introduced a long time ago, and have been widely used and recently much dis-cussed. In research dealing with literature and other media, frame-theoretical reflections have, however, not been nearly as common. In part, at least in research in English, terminology may be responsible

for this, as ‘frame’ means quite different things, depending on the medium focussed on. Indeed, the term ‘frame’ is at least as multifacet-ted in the specific reference to artefacts as in the general cognitive sense outlined in the previous chapter. If the term occurs within the ‘frame’ of art history, it, of course, refers to physical picture frames (which have elicited a certain interest in the recent past12). In film studies, ‘frame’ denotes a single picture as the minimal visual unit of a film. In literary studies, in the relatively few cases where the term is employed systematically at all, ‘frame’ has been used with several meanings, most frequently denoting the framing part of ‘frame stories’ (such as Boccaccio’s Il Decamerone)13. Moreover, ‘frame’ in Lotman’s The Structure of the Artistic Text (1970/1977: ch. 8.1) means the beginning and ending of every narrative, not only of frame stories. The term has yet a different meaning in the discussion of

12 Cf. Mendgen, ed. 1995 and the 1995 exhibitions In Perfect Harmony: Bild und Rahmen 1850-1920 in Vienna (Kunstforum) and Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum) or the 1987 exhibition in Dijon and Paris Le Cadre et le socle dans l’art du 20e siècle.

13 See elsewhere in this volume, “Framing Borders in Frame Stories”. This is also the only meaning to be found s. v. “Rahmen” in German dictionaries of literary termi-nology such as Wilpert 1969, Träger, ed. 1986, or Schweikle/Schweikle, eds. 1990 (in my entry in Nünning, ed. 1997/2004, I also felt compelled to use this denotation as the first meaning mentioned); for a similarly restricted use cf. Seager 1991. The fram-ings of a frame tale (as well as of similar mise-en-abyme structures as occurring in a play within a play, a film within a film etc.) are indeed frequent and privileged places of interpretive coding but, as will be shown, they are most certainly not the only rele-vant ones.


‘frame breakings’, especially postmodernist ones, in which ‘frame’, as a rule, designates the traditional order and conventions of a narra-tive14: such ‘frame breaking’ is frequently used here as a synonym for ‘metalepsis’ and constitutes an especially interesting sub-field of frame-analytical studies, as the many contributions to this volume that deal with this aspect indicate (Patricia Allmer’s on Magritte, Maria Stefanescu’s on Cortázar, Margarete Rubik’s on Fforde, and my own on ‘defamiliarized framings’). In addition, ‘frame’ in some cases also refers to devices giving ‘relief’ to especially prominent or meaningful passages in a narrative15. Furthermore, Philipe Hamon, in part antici-pating Genette’s theory of the paratext, used the term “cadre” (in my sense of ‘framing’) in a discussion of metalinguistic devices which are employed as part of the ‘apparatus of demarcation’ which surrounds texts (“‘l’appareil démarcatif’ de l’énoncé littéraire” [1977: 266]). Lastly, there is a usage which comes relatively close to the idea of ‘cognitive frames’ as referred to in the present context, namely where the term is employed in the sense of ‘general presuppositions of knowledge as mental concepts in processes of production and un-derstanding’ (“alltagsweltlich[e] [...] Wissensvoraussetzungen [...] als mentale Konzepte [...] [und] Strukturierungsleitlinien von Produk-tions- und Verstehensprozessen” [Müske 1992: 8 and 31])16. The ter-minological confusion17 and widespread neglect of frame theory18 is 14 Cf. Pearse 1980, Waugh 1984: 28-34, and McHale 1987: 197-198.

15 For this special use of ‘frame’ see Caws 1985; it is also implied in some of the forms of ‘framing’ mentioned by Reid 1992: 49.

16 Cf. also Pearce 1975 and Hrushovsky 1984 and his theory of “frames of refer-ence”.

17 The deplorably inconsistent use of ‘frame’ in present-day literary theory is well illustrated in the Concise Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory by Jeremy Hawthorn (1994: 74-76), in which – unlike most similar dictionaries (especially dictionaries in German) – the term does appear in an article of several pages. In this article, Hawthorn not only mentions the traditional use of the term in ‘frame stories’ but refers also, among others, to Goffman’s theory, to Mary Ann Caws’ monograph, to Mieke Bal’s use (1980/1985) of the concept as “space in which the CHARACTER is situated” (74) and to Umberto Eco (1977/1981), for whom “INTERTEXTUAL” frames are “literary topoi or narrative schemes” (75).

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particularly surprising in literary studies, since Goffman, as one of its pioneers, repeatedly discussed literature and in fact dedicated a whole chapter of his Frame Analysis to drama (1974: ch. 5)19.

The situation is even more problematic with reference to what is in

focus in the present volume, namely ‘framings’ as codings of cogni-tive frames. Indeed, the ‘effacement’ of the picture frame, mentioned by Derrida in La Vérité en peinture (1978/1987: 73, cf. also MacLach-lan/Reid 1994: 6 and passim), seems to have affected scholarly atten-tion, too. This is true concerning individual media such as literature, where there are only a few exceptions (including Goffman 1974, Hamon 1977 [cf. 266 f.], Lanser 1981, and above all Genette’s study on paratexts [1987]) which deal with the question of marking frames20; but the neglect also applies to the fact that framings – as

much as frames – are transmedial phenomena, phenomena that exist

in more than one medium (actually in all media) and as such should have found attention within this interdisciplinary context, too.

18 Apart from isolated publications such as Frow 1982 (an excellent study), Caws 1985, or Fishman Summerfield 1986, literary frame theory has in fact not met with much attention to date. While Frow 1982 is a first valuable attempt at presenting various forms and functions of literary framings, Caws 1985 is only a marginal con-tribution to the field, since she deals primarily with “techniques enabling a concentra-tion on a specific passage” inside a work of fiction (21), and Fishman Summerfield 1986 is even more disappointing, owing to her inconsistent and highly idiosyncratic use of the term ‘framing’. Fludernik 1993 concentrates on the problems of “(illicit) transferral of the frame of real-life conversational narrative onto literary personae and constructed entities” (448). Seager 1991 – together with Schwanitz (1990: 99-110) and parts of MacLachlan/Reid 1994 – can be counted among the few attempts to introduce the linguistic concepts of frame/framing into literary theory and interpretation.

19 Cf. also Bateson, who mentions literary genres such as “fantasy or myth” as par-ticularly in need of framings (1955/1972: 190).

20 Lanser, in the third chapter of her book on The Narrative Act (1981), discusses various manifestations and functions of the “textual voice” currently often called “paratexts”. Yet neither she nor the coiner of this latter term, Genette, explicitly use the term ‘framing’. Another remarkable book using the concept of ‘framing’ is Reid 1992. Yet, in contrast to Genette and also to my ensuing discussion, Reid does not consider ‘framing’ primarily as a ‘textual’ (or author-centred) phenomenon but as a reader activity: “framing is something that a reader does to a text; it is the application of an interpretive procedure” (13); cf. also MacLachlan/Reid 1994: 6.


The present volume aims to overcome the neglect of frame-theoretical and frame-practical reflections within a transmedial frame-work that includes not only literature but also other media. Owing to this broad perspective, it equally belongs to a field that has attracted

wide-spread attention in the past few years: the field of intermediality studies (cf. Barricelli/Gibaldi, eds. 1982; Zima, ed. 1995; Lagerroth et al., eds. 1997; Helbig, ed. 1998; Wolf 1999b and 2002; Rajewsky 2002). This affiliation is also indicated in the fact that the present volume is the first in a series dedicated to the study of intermediality. It is in fact not only intermedial in its general transmedial perspective on framing in various individual media but also, as a number of contributions to the present volume show, as a phenomenon that is observable in framing practices to the extent that they frequently involve more than one medium and thus constitute variants of intermedial reference or even of plurimediality.

As framings from this intermedial point of view form an area too vast for exploration in one volume, certain restrictions must apply: this refers on the one hand to the particular focus of this volume, which is on the trans- and plurimedial forms and functions of what

will be explained in the following as ‘framing borders’. On the other hand, limitations also refer to the circumstance that, as is usual in first explorations of a field, completeness cannot possibly be achieved, neither in the range of functions and forms nor in the media discussed. Thus, in the eighteen case studies collected in this volume (sixteen of which are revised contributions to a conference on ‘Framing in Literature and Other Media’ held in Graz in June 2004), there is no essay that explores framings in lyric poetry or in drama (where prologues and epilogues would be interesting objects of study in the present context21); there is moreover no contribution which investi-gates radio drama, and none deals exclusively with ‘contextual fram-

21 However, some aspects of dramatic prologues as literary framings are treated in Wolf, forthcoming.

12 Werner Wolf

ings’ as formed by opera houses, theatres, concert halls or museums22. Still, the range of media covered (narrative literature, film, the visual arts, architecture and music) is sufficiently large to highlight the trans-medial nature of framings. In exploring framings in various media the following questions guiding both the project as a whole and the individual contributions have been asked: What means do individual media have at their disposal to influence reception processes? How do individual media collaborate in the field of plurimedial framings or in works where framings and the framed belong to different media? What functions do framings fulfill, and how have these and the different forms of framings evolved over the centuries?

3. Frames and framings in literature and other media:

meaning of the terms and forms of framings

As the basis of the present volume is a transfer of the notions of ‘frame’ and ‘framing’ from linguistics and other disciplines to the study of literature and other media as specific forms of signifying practices, it is to be expected that ‘frame’ and ‘framing’ will be used here with specific denotations and that the plethora of existing mean-ings that have been mentioned above is reduced to relatively clear and manageable dimensions. Therefore, we should answer the following questions: What in fact does ‘frame’ and ‘framing’ mean for a frame-analytical study that deals with works or performances of literature, the visual arts, in film or music23, and what ‘framing’ phenomena are in focus in the present volume?

A first, basic specification must be made: our discussion of ‘fram-ings in literature and other media’ cannot equally embrace all kinds of framings that might occur within or in the context of literary and other

22 On museums, see, however, the concluding remarks in Richard Phelan’s contribu-tion to this volume.

23 In order not to over-complicate the text, in the following , ‘work’ will also include ‘performance’.


medial works but must focus on particularly important ones. As litera-ture and other media imply specific frames as artefacts it is advisable to concentrate on those framings that code frames which take this special nature into account. In other words, what must primarily be in focus in a discussion of framings ‘in’ works of literature and other media are framings that refer to, and guide the interpretation of (parts

of), such works as artefacts. In particular, this means that frames and framings in literature and other media are linked to the afore-mentioned circumstance that the discursive exchange elicited by them, as opposed to everyday communication, is an ‘unusual’ one. This unusualness derives from the fact that most medial exchanges, including those referring to literature and other arts, are informed by several specific frames:

1. the frame ‘artwork’: in Western, non-pragmatic art this frame triggers a specific, aesthetic approach (ästhetische Einstellung) and leads to the expectation that an artwork is a meaningful unit, no matter how obscure or fragmented a given work may seem, and that it should not be received merely for pragmatic purposes; this relative independence of what is regarded as ‘art’ from pragmatic considerations frequently appears to produce a certain indetermi-nacy24 concerning the situation in which the reception takes place (novels can be read in a plethora of contexts, and for almost a cen-tury people have become accustomed to ‘consuming’, e.g. radio music, in equally undetermined circumstances);

2. generic frames: generic conventions form frames that not only contribute to distinguishing artworks and other medial products

24 In literary theory, the ‘lack of a pragmatic communicative situation of fictional texts’ has been emphasized by Iser (“der fiktionale Text [...] ist situationslos” [1975: 294]). However, the thesis of the situational indeterminacy has justly been criticized (cf. Warning 1983: 191 f.) since (Western) literature as well as other medial products are, of course, not typically discourses produced by anonymous agencies without in-tentions and without reference to a historical and social context, nor do they typically appear without some hints concerning the special frames of interpretation which should be attributed to individual works.

14 Werner Wolf

from each other but can also trigger expectations that are quite dif-ferent from those in real life (thus, the appearance of ghosts may be regarded as improbable in life, while in horror films, as well as in Gothic stories and novels, this is not so);

3. the frame ‘fictionality’: in media representing or constructing pos-sible worlds, fictionality is a frequently applicable frame that im-plies a specific, ‘non-serious’ or playful communication25 and also creates a kind of uncertainty or vagueness that would be untypical of pragmatic communication.

The unusualness produced by these and further frames in the reception of artefacts has important consequences concerning the role of framings: as the reception of fictional artefacts is embedded in what might be called – in contrast to Goffman’s “primary frameworks” (1974: 21 ff.) – a ‘secondary framework’, literary texts and other me-

dial products usually require more framings than stereotyped every-day activities or communicational situations. These framings frequent-

ly have as their content precisely the frames just mentioned. A further phenomenon is also responsible for the special impor-

tance of framings with reference to media such as literature, film, music or painting, as opposed to real-life: in the arts and media one must expect a greater ‘plasticity’ of the frames. This regards in par-ticular the above-mentioned tendency of aesthetic works (as well as

their production and reception) not only to refer to existing frames but

to create new, or at least more or less modified ones. Obviously, framing is then all the more necessary. This applies also to the kind of framings that is in focus here, namely to those that contribute to the interpretation of literary and other medial works as artefacts.

Framings in literature and other media exist in a variety of forms. These can be ordered typologically according to a number of criteria (see below, Figure 1) which permit a comparison between the various

25 Fictionality (in particular of drama) as ‘play’ that requires ‘keying’ was empha-sized by Goffman 1974, and such “play frames” have recently been discussed also with reference to film (Anderson 1996; quotation on p. 120).


manifestations of framings among homo- as well as heteromedial works (mono- and plurimedial artefacts)26. It should be noted that dif-ferent categories and forms can be combined in one and the same framing.

Criteria of differentiation Forms of framings

a) framing agency sender-based recipient-based message- or ‘text’-based27

context-based

b) extension of framing total vs. partial

c) framing medium in relation to framed

[only for (con-)textual framings]: homo- vs. heteromedial

d) authorization of framing authorized (intracompositional) vs. non-authorized (extracompositional)

e) saliency of the framing overt/explicit vs. covert/implicit

f) location of framing with reference to actual mes-sage/text

[only for textual framings]: para- vs. intratextual

g) location in process of reception

[only for textual framings of temporal media]: initial – internal – terminal

Figure 1: Typology of framings

a) A first criterion of a typology of framings refers to the framing ‘agency’. As already said, there are several potential ‘agencies’:

the ‘sender’ (author, painter, film-maker, composer), the ‘recipi-ent’28 (reader, viewer, listener) and the ‘message’ (the work in

26 A noteworthy typology of framing was presented by Reid (1992: 44-57), although he accentuates framing activities rather than results. Reid distinguishes between “textu-al”, “extratextual”, “circumtextual” and “intertextual” framings. His typology, while being more differentiated than my own in the field outside ‘textual framings’, is less elaborate inside this field, which is, however, particularly important for the present volume.

27 For the broad sense in which ‘text’ is used here see above, note 28.

28 In Reid’s terminology recipient-based framings correspond to “extratextual” framings (1992: 46), while sender-based ones do not occur.

16 Werner Wolf

question) and its context. The framings that are attributable to

these ‘agencies’ differ in that sender- and recipient-based framings are interpretive encoding or decoding activities, while

context- and message- or ‘text-based’ framings can be regarded

as interpretive signals and hence ‘givens’29.

‘Contextual framings’ are ‘given’ framings and occur in the cultural space ‘outside’ the work in question30. They may, for in-stance, take on the form of an author’s comment on his writings in an interview, of an art gallery signalling that the frame ‘artwork’ for the exhibited objects is applicable, or of trailers advertising a forthcoming film (see Erik Hedling’s contribution to this volume)31. If framings as ‘givens’ appear ‘inside’, that is, as parts

of a work or ‘text’, they are ‘textual framings’. Both contextual and textual framings are highly important for the recipient’s framing activity.

Among the four possibilities resulting from using the ‘framing agency’ as a criterion, the ‘context’ and above all the ‘text’ will predominantly be focussed on in the following essays32. This is

29 In the following, for simplicity’s sake, I will use the term ‘text’ in a broad sense which includes all sorts of verbal as well as non-verbal signifying systems.

30 In Reid’s terminology this would include both “intertextual” (1992: 51) and “circumtextual” framings (44), which, however, also contain what below will be re-ferred to as ‘paratextual’ framings. Cf. also MacLachlain/Reid 1994: 4; MacLachlan/ Reid, following Culler 1988, insist that context as such is also ‘produced’, yet when they speak of ‘context’, they have in mind contextual (cognitive) frames, not contex-tual framings in my sense.

31 Genette, in his typology of ‘paratexts’, which, however, refer only to printed lit-erature, terms part of these external framings “épitexte[s]” as opposed to “péri-texte]s]”, which are given in the work under consideration (1987: 10 f.). Reid (1992: 40-58) opposes “extratextual” and “circumtextual framing” to “intratextual” and “in-tertextual framing”.

32 As contextual framings are often more difficult to assess and may be ‘read’ very differently by different recipients, it is indeed understandable if one privileges textual framings, which are more easily available. For example, not all readers of John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) will have read the author’s own comments on this novel, since they are not included in the current editions, but have only the text and its framings at their disposal.


justifiable because (con-)textual framings lend themselves more easily to quotation or illustration and interpretation than sender- and recipient-based ones. In addition, (con-)textual framings are intimately linked to both sender- and recipient-based framing activities, which are not free-floating but dependent on the context as well as on the message: the sender’s framing activity will be focussed on potential recipients and manifests itself in framing markers, while the recipient’s framing process, which has found some attention in frame theory33, is not an autonomous process either but to a large extent determined by textual framings, which the recipient is supposed to decode. Moreover, it is as much in-fluenced, e.g. by contextual cultural framings, as the sender’s en-coding activity. Thus, (con-)textual framings are the legitimate

core of research dealing with medial framings. This is why text-based and context-based framings with an immediate relation to the framed will be privileged as the focus of the typological diffe-rentiations as well as of the discussions in this volume. The further restriction to contextual framings with an “immediate relation to the framed” is advisable if one does not want to get lost in the potentially endless field of contextual discourses, documents or elements that may be identified as ‘markers’ in the construction of the frames conditioning the reception of a given work34.

b) A second criterion that, within a transmedial typology of framings, still applies to all framing agencies (as it can refer to both cognitive

33 ‘Reader/receiver-based framing’ is a vast field in which some work has been done by Reid 1992, who regards framing as a readerly activity (cf. 13); cf. also Culler’s concept of “framing the sign” as “something we do” (1988: xiv). It is, however, a mistake (as Reid’s own work shows, since he is constantly forced to take recourse to textual or contextual framings outside the reader’s responsibility), to neglect its com-plement: the framing contained in a text and its immediate context (‘text/context-based framing’).

34 For instance, among Virginia Woolf’s many writings only those would be termed ‘contextual framings’ of her novel Mrs Dalloway (1925) which explicitly deal with this novel; all other texts, even though they may yield valuable general information on the novel and Woolf’s aesthetics, would just be ‘contexts’.

18 Werner Wolf

processes and physical results) concerns the question of the exten-sion of a particular framing or framing activity: it may be relevant

to an entire work, in which case it is a total framing, or only to

part of a work, in which case it is a partial framing. c) The third criterion, like all the following ones, is already restricted

to (con-)textual framings, as it manifests itself only in ‘products’: it is of particular importance from an intermedial perspective as it centres on the number of media employed within the framings themselves or in the combination of framings and framed works.

Framing and framed can be homomedial, or both can belong to

different media: they are then heteromedial and form a plurime-dial whole (as in the banal case of a verbal caption accompanying a painting). The same, of course, applies to framings alone, which can also employ one or more media (the latter variant applies, e.g., when the introductory material of a novel not only comprises para-texts but also a frontispiece, hence a picture).

d) The fourth criterion (deducible from what Pearson 1990: 16 has said about literary framings) refers to the original unity of compo-sition between framed and framings (usually, but not necessarily, related to the question of authorship, as ‘allographic’ framings by another agency than the author [cf. Genette 1987: 14] may yet be authorized or tolerated by her or him). As this criterion refers to products only, it is also restricted to textual and contextual fram-ings: on the one hand both framing and framed can form an origi-nally planned and authorized compositional unit, in which case the

framing is ‘intracompositional’ or authorized; yet framings can also be altered or added to the framed independently of an original

design, in which case they are ‘extracompositional’ or un-authorized35.

35 MacLachlan/Reid 1994 use seemingly similar terminology in a partly different sense: while for them, too, intracompositional framings are “‘authorially’ controlled”, extracompositional ones “belong to the world of the viewer/consumer” (24). In cases where, e.g., the authorization of framings by other agencies than the author is difficult


e) Yet another possibility of distinguishing between different fram-ings (always with respect to framings-as-givens, as opposed to

framings-as-activities), is based on the criterion of saliency. It per-

mits us to differentiate between non-salient, covert or implicit framings and salient, overt or explicit ones. An overt or explicit framing is a discrete physical unit marking a frame in an easily identifiable way inside or outside the framed (part of a) work. Overt framings are easily discernible, usually because they are not only functionally and logically located on another level than the framed (i.e. on a meta-level) but also manifestly appear on such a different level. In contrast to this, a covert or implicit framing is also a discrete, physical marking of a frame; it is, however, not so easily discernible, for instance, because it does not openly appear on another level than the framed. Thus, stills advertising a film out-side a cinema are overt framings, as they visibly appear on another level than the film itself, while an exaggerated stereotypical and perhaps funny scene within a film signalling the frame ‘parody’ is a covert framing.

f) With reference to (entirely or partially) verbal media such as printed literature, drama, the visual arts, film, and also vocal music and the musical theatre, textual framings may be further sub-

divided, to borrow a term from Genette (1987), into ‘paratextualframings’ and ‘intratextual framings’36. However, in contrast to Genette, for whom ‘paratexts’ comprise both ‘contextual’ and ‘textual’ framings, I would like to restrict ‘paratextual framings’, whether authorized or not, to a variant of ‘textual’ framings,

to assess it may be useful – taking up some of Genette’s categories (see 1987: 14) – simply to distinguish between authorial and allographic framings.

36 For a similar differentiation with reference to film see Anderson 1996: 120-125. The typology of forms of framing in MacLachlan/Reid 1994, is, however, different. Partly owing to a non-distinction between ‘frame’ and ‘framing’ in the senses used in the present “Introduction”, their categories, even if they sound similar, do not corre-spond to my categories: thus, their category ‘circumtextual framing’ contains both ‘paratextual’ and ‘intratextual’ framings in my sense.

20 Werner Wolf

namely to paratexts which are parts of individual works and are positioned at their borders, but are discernible not only through their liminal position but also, and, above all, through their func-tion as introductory, explanatory etc. material that forms a ‘thresh-old’ to the main text of the work in question (Genette aptly entitled his exploration of paratexts Seuils). As liminal phenoma, paratexts possess a characteristic ambiguity: they are positioned in between text and context and belong to the ‘work’ but not to the text proper (i.e. the presentation of the possible world). In printed literature, such ‘paratextual’ framings include titles, epigraphs, footnotes, postscripts etc.37, in film the opening or closing credits, and in per-formed drama prologues and epilogues are sometimes also classi-fied as paratexts (cf. Genette 1987: 154; Bruster/Weimann 2004: 38)38. In the visual arts, the ‘paratext’ would correspond to a picture frame or a caption, as opposed to a painted frame or writing as part of the represented world on the canvas. In music, one may argue whether, e.g., the overture to an opera may be likened to a preface in fiction or to a theatrical prologue and may hence be analogous to a paratext39.

Intratextual framings (which are usually authorized) comprise all elements within the main ‘text’ that signal particular cognitive frames which are relevant to the reception of the work in conside-ration (or parts of it). With a view to media that can represent reality, such as fiction, drama and film, and which therefore can also represent all kinds of framing occurring in real life it should be remembered that the focus will be in particular on those intra-textual framings that contribute to the coding of literary and other works as artefacts. Thus, in fiction, parents who discuss the cele-bration of the birthday of a child and thus mark the appropriate

37 For a short “‘checklist’” of such paratextual framings see Lanser 1981: 130.

38 Elsewhere I have argued that prologues also bear resemblances to ‘extradiegetic’, narratorial passages in fiction (cf. Wolf, forthcoming).

39 See the contribution to this volume by Michael Walter.


frame for the following scene as part of an intratextually repre-sented possible world would be disregarded, while framings of frame stories, in particular where interpretive instructions concern-ing the embedded story are given, would be central objects of con-sideration. The same applies to other intratextual framings such as explicitly metafictional comments by a narrator who openly lays bare the fictionality of the text one is reading, or else to opening formulae such as “Once upon a time” that indicate the genre ‘fairy tale’ and thus serve an implicitly metafictional function. In film, the framing of a film within a film would be another example of a particularly relevant intra-‘textual’ framing, while in painting this would, for instance, be the mise en abyme of a physical picture frame as a part of what is represented on the canvas.

g) Of additional interest is a final criterion, which, however, is only

applicable to temporal media: it bears on the location of framings in the reception process and serves to distinguish between initial, internal and terminal framings. It should be clear that this crite-rion cuts across the above distinction between para- and intratextu-al framings as, for instance, literary end framings can be both para-textual afterwords or intratextual closing formulae, as sometimes used in fairy tales (“[...] and they lived happily ever after”). It should also be mentioned in this context that the present focus on the cognitive functions of framings entails an analysis – or recon-

struction – of framings and their workings during the first recep-tion of an artefact or text, for it is under this condition that the par-ticular location of framings in the reception process is most impor-tant (while repeated receptions would blur the differences some-what, as former framings may be felt to anticipate later ones).

4. Framing borders in literature and other media,

and some of their functions

As we could see from the typology outlined in the preceding chapter, there is a plethora of possible forms of framings. There are even so

22 Werner Wolf

many that the inclusion of all of these forms in a research project would result in such a multitude of heterogeneous phenomena that it would be difficult to come to any meaningful results. The intermedial focus of the present book would aggravate this problem, and, even if one restricted research to one medium only, yet another problem would remain: namely the fact that not all of the manifold varieties of framing are equally interesting and equally useful for the interpreta-tion of given works. For example, authorized/intracompositional fram-ings will in most contexts appear as more relevant than allographic, unauthorized/extracompositional ones. Since framings are more relevant the more they influence recipient-response and the more easily they are quotable and discernible, it is advisable to privilege not only, as already said, contextual and, above all, textual framings but in addition those that are salient or overt (as opposed to covert ones), and in temporal media those that appear in initial position. For it is at the beginning of an intended reception process that important frames of reference are traditionally signalled and expectations are created, and when frames are signalled, this is usually done in a salient way and refers to the entire work under consideration.

A concentration on overt, total and ‘textual’ framings could be car-ried out with reference to all media. Yet, a further focus on what seems to be particularly interesting, above all for a reception-oriented cognitive perspective, namely on initial framings, would clearly be in-applicable to spatial media. This limitation can be avoided if one uses a notion as a common denominator of transmedial comparison that has repeatedly been employed in frame-theoretical discussions (recently, e.g. by Young 2004): the idea of a ‘border’. Indeed, the concentration

on – predominantly authorized/intracompositional – framing bor-ders, be it in a spatial or a temporal sense, is what most of the contri-butions in this volume have in common, as the ‘edge’ in both respects is indeed a privileged place for signalling relevant frames.

It should be mentioned, though, that coding cognitive frames in the sense of metaconcepts that guide interpretation is not the only function


of framing borders. They can, in addition, contain ‘simple’ concepts that may also influence the reception of the respective work but are not metaconcepts (and consequently their coding would not be an instance of ‘framing’ in our sense). Thus, a prologue prefacing a per-formance of a play may signal the frame ‘theatrical situation’ as such (and to this extent contain an instance of ‘framing’, since a ‘theatrical situation’ is a complex metaconcept). This is, for instance, the case in the prologue to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, where the prologue-figure, speaking on behalf of his fellow-actors, meta-dramatically refers to the “two-hours’ traffic of our stage” (Shakespeare 1997: 873; Prol. 12). Yet, the same prologue may also announce some content details about the story that will be performed, such as the names of principal characters or the fact that “[t]wo households, both alike in dignity [...]/From ancient grudge” will “break to new mutiny” (Prol. 1-2). These pieces of information, while forming part of the play’s border, need not necessarily be ‘frames’ (and therefore this informa-

tion would not be a case of ‘framing’40). Yet, there are hardly any

‘framing borders’ that would only contain such ‘lower-level’ informa-tion. Rather, setting cognitive frames seems to be their most important concern – and therefore framing borders and their framing functions will be the focus in the present volume (without, however, excluding occasional further forms and functions of framings41).

In terms of the foregoing typology of framings (see Figure 1) the emphasis of the present volume can be described as follows: it will be

40 As frequently happens, in practice the distinction between simple information contained in a ‘border’ and the coding of a metaconcept can be ‘fuzzy’. This is, for instance, the case if a character’s name is mentioned in the prologue of a classical tragedy. This may trigger a well-known story-scenario (e.g. by referring to a myth) and thereby set a play in a specific context. As opposed to the example quoted from Shakespeare, in this case the seemingly simple information of a name can at the same time be tantamount to the coding of a frame (namely the myth in which the character of that name occurs, along with all of its details and connotations).

41 An example of a framing other than a framing border in fiction would be an ‘in-ternal’ metafictional comment by a narrator laying bare the fictionality of the text in the middle of a novel.

24 Werner Wolf

on overt (because of their nature as discernible borders), mostly total42

and predominantly ‘(para-)textual’, although also on some ‘contex-tual’43 framings that are either temporally located in initial (occasion-ally also terminal) positions or in a spatial sense immediately surround the framed phenomena. It should be noted that the notion of ‘framing border’, in verbal artefacts, includes both paratexts and (initial and terminal) intratextual elements44 (which is an advantage, e.g. in dramatology, where the status of prologues as paratexts or ‘narratorial elements of the main text’ is difficult to establish45), and that nothing has been specified concerning the opposition of ‘homo- vs. heteromedial’ framings (both will be treated in the following). For an overview of the position of such contextual and textual ‘framing bor-ders’ within the range of possible forms of framings in literature and other media see Figure 2.

Examples of such framing borders are, in literature in general, the framing parts of frame narratives (see my essay in this volume, “Framing Borders in Frame Stories”) or of plays within plays, and in written literature – if we concentrate on individual books as units – cover illustrations and opening paratexts (see the contributions to this volume by Till Dembeck, Christian Quendler, Margarete Rubik, and my own on “Defamiliarized Initial Framings”), but also initial inter-medial (ekphrastic) references, e.g. to pictures (see Haiko Wandhoff’s

42 The position at the border of an artefact privileges a relevance of the framing to the artefact as a whole.

43 Framing borders can be part of the work itself (i.e. picture frames, whether de-signed by the painter him- or herself or not), but can also be located in the immediate context surrounding the work (e.g. a particular form of stages framing drama in a specific period of drama history).

44 Paratexts, according to Genette 1987, are ‘thresholds’ to the main text that are visually located at its margins (initially, e.g. as a foreword, internally, e.g. as a chapter title or a footnote, and terminally, e.g. as an afterword). Yet, for the status as a framing border the functional criterion of coding framings in initial (or terminal) position is more important than Genette’s visual one, and therefore initial (and terminal) intratextual elements are in principle also eligible in our context.

45 For the ambiguous status of dramatic prologues see Wolf, forthcoming.


FRAMINGS IN LITERATURE AND OTHER MEDIA

sender-based contextual textual recipient-based

(framing as (framing as ‘given’, (framing as ‘given’, (framing as

process) homo- and hetero- homo- and hetero- process)

medial) medial)

framing border other framings framing border other framings

extra-compositional intra-/extra-

or intra-comp., compositional

usually total total/partial usually total, total/partial

initial/terminal internal

always overt always overt

overt covert overt covert

italics: forms of framings applicable to temporal media only

bold types: forms of framings emphasized in the present volume

Figure 2: The position of ‘framing borders’ within a typology of framings

essay in this book) and terminal elements (see Remigius Bunia’s con-tribution46). If we focus on individual pages, framing borders also in-clude the painted margins of book illustrations (see the contribution by Anja Grebe). In performed literature, dramatic prologues are among the best-known (opening) framing borders. In painting and related arts, framing borders are, of course, picture frames or their substitutes (see the contributions by Patricia Allmer, Vera Beyer, Daniel Herrmann, and Richard Phelan). In architecture, framing bor-ders can also occur as constructions and arrangements that highlight 46 Cf. also Larroux 1994, who explicitly employs the metaphor of ‘frame’ (cadre).

26 Werner Wolf

particular parts inside a building (see below, Götz Pochat’s essay) or the entire building. In film, framing borders are contextual trailers (see Erik Hedling’s contribution) as well as the paratextual framings usually occurring in the form of opening or closing credits (see the essay by Roy Sommer); and in music, framing borders can be ‘para-textual’ overtures (see Michael Walter’s contribution) as well as ‘intratextual’ passages introducing a framed composition (see Walter Bernhart’s essay).

As far as typical functions of such framing borders are concerned, they all – like the abstract frames they code – have one basic function in common: as framings, or in Goffman’s terminology, “keyings” (1974: 40 ff.), they help the recipient to select frames of interpretation or reference relevant for the work under consideration. If the abstract frames can be described as tools of interpretation, their codings in framings are the (visible or imagined) labels on the tool-box that in-duce the recipient to choose the correct tools. By pointing to frames as tools or guides of interpretation, framings – and this applies also and in particular to the special form of framing borders – likewise fulfill an essentially interpretive, but also a controlling function. Most importantly, framings mark an artefact as such and distinguish it from its surroundings by indicating the special rules (frames) that apply in its reception. Lotman has this function in mind when speaking of the beginning and the ending of a temporal artefact as a ‘frame’ that marks the border between the infinite world and the finite artefact as a model of the world47. In addition, framing borders often contribute to the overcoming of what has become typical of Western, de-pragma-tized art, namely the afore-mentioned seeming situational indetermi-nacy: in literature, for instance, framing borders thus frequently help to constitute or stabilize a real or imaginary reception situation in which the individual artefact makes sense. In this they cannot only

47 See Lotman 1970/1977: ch. 8.1, and Larroux 1994, a highly interesting essay that centres in particular on the closing markers of literary texts.


highlight the artefact as such, but also its relation to the producer, to a certain context or to themselves as recipients.

These general functions may be specified as follows, according to the predominant relation of a framing element to one out of five con-stituents of the discursive exchange (it should be noted, though, that one element may have several functions at the same time):

The most obvious function of the framing is its message- or text-centred function. It may generally be attributed to all elements pro-viding a direct interpretive help for, or a control of, the reception by commenting on the ‘text’ or artefact and by creating certain expecta-tions about it (cf. Frow 1982: 26, 27)48. Such text-centred framings are, for instance, generic markers or indicators of the location of the work in question within the opposition ‘fiction vs. non-fiction’ (ac-cording to Goffman, this is even the most prominent task of the “key-ing” [1974: 47]49). This text-centred function may also be seen at work in liminal framing borders that delimit an artefact and distinguish it from its surroundings or other artefacts, thus marking a compositional unity50. In an analogous way it is discernible in the signalling of the beginning or ending of artefacts of temporal media (“The End”). The text-centred function is moreover present in all elements giving information, e.g., on an artefact’s creation, themes or relevant individual frames of interpretation (cf. Genette 1987: 15). In addition, it manifests itself where certain elements of the work are highlighted

48 In textual framings, this text-centred function often creates self-referentiality (or self-reflexivity) within the work in question and can be related to Jakobson’s phatic and metatextual functions of language (cf. 1960).

49 The indication of fictionality, or at least artificiality, in or by framing devices as opposed to non-fictional or natural phenomena is in fact an important factor in creat-ing aesthetic distance and ensuring the reception of a work as art. This is underlined both by art historians (e.g. Zaloscer 1974: 190) and narratologists or textual critics, e.g. Lotman 1970/1977: 209), who all emphasize the unity of the work of art created by framing devices. Cf. also Weinrich 1971: 9: “Eine literarische Kommunikation enthält, vorzugsweise zu Beginn der Kommunikation, bestimmte Zeichen, die den literarischen Charakter (die ‘Poetizität’) des übermittelten Textes signalisieren.”

50 With reference to pictorial framings cf. already Simmel 1902/1922: 46f.

28 Werner Wolf

as particularly meaningful, or where a selection which should be made during the reception is prestructured51. The text-centred function is also present in occasional elements serving as embellishments and markers of value (as can be observed in some learned literary epi-graphs as well as in many painterly frames, in particular in gilt frames, where the use of gold is traditionally a marker of value)52. A particularly interesting text-centred function may operate in certain forms of what I have called elsewhere ‘mise en cadre’ (Wolf 1999a: 104 and 2001: 63-65): this refers to the (as a rule anticipatory) illustra-tion of elements of the framed artefact in the framing53 so that a discernible relationship of similarity is established between the two levels54. This device is, for instance, at work in a particularly sombre

51 This selective function of framing is especially important if artefacts are not con-sidered to be a sum of signs which “are simply given to perception” and all of which are equally relevant, but as complexes in which “to perceive [...] signifier[s] at all is to confer on some patterns and not on others the status of meaningful expressions” (Culler 1988: 224).

52 For this minor function, which is restricted to some forms of paratexts, cf. again Genette (1987: 374): “‘faire joli’”.

53 As opposed to Larroux 1994, for whom mise en cadre simply means the fact of adding a framing text to another, more important text (see 247f.), I define ‘mise en cadre’ as one of the forms of typically literary “similitudes textuelles” (Ricardou 1978: 75), more precisely as the opposite of the mise en abyme: both forms are variants of self-referentiality operating within one and the same text or artefact; yet, while the latter designates a discrete lower level element or passage which is charac-terized by a similarity to a structure or element of a higher level, mise en cadre refers to the ‘higher’, framing level to the extent as it contains similarities to the framed lower level (see also my contribution on “Framing Borders in Frame Stories” in this volume).

54 Creating similarities through ‘illustrations’ is what differentiates mise en cadre from ordinary framings as codings of cognitive frames. In verbal artefacts, this means that elements of the framed text are not merely thematized in the framing border in the mode of ‘telling’ but are illustrated in the mode of ‘showing’. Thus, the coding of the frame ‘adventure story’ in the title of Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe, The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, is a ‘framing’ in the sense used in this essay but not a mise en cadre; in contrast to this, the title of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest could be regarded as a micro mise en cadre because it establishes a similarity with elements of the following play not only by ‘telling’ but by ‘showing’ both the witty word play (earnest/Ernest) and the non-fulfilment of expectations (seriousness as an “important” theme of a comedy!) that so conspicuously inform Wilde’s comedy.


operatic overture that ‘sets the frame’ for the atmosphere of the ensuing tragic opera. Of course, the details of the similarities (e.g. particular motives of the opera that may be anticipated in an overture) can only be perceived retrospectively and thus constitute mise-en-

cadre elements that are beyond what is in focus in the following vol-ume, namely first receptions. Yet, cultural conventions may permit the informed listener of such an overture to decipher the ‘atmospheric’ signals contained in it even at a first hearing, e.g. as a generic preparation for what follows and thus may raise corresponding expec-tations. While some kind of text-centred function is to be found in vir-tually all framings, since they, by definition, are related to the framed, there are nevertheless different degrees of prominence of such text-centredness. The text-centred function of framing borders is thus their most natural function, yet it is not the only possible function.

Given the tendency (in Genette as in the traditional evaluation of pictorial frames) to over-stress the text-centred function of framing elements, which are usually seen as completely subservient to the main text and devoid of any independent value55, one should above all

emphasize the possibility of a self-centred function of framing de-vices56. This function is often transmitted through defamiliarized framings (see below, my essay on “Defamiliarized Initial Framings in Fiction”) and therefore especially frequent in experimental or metatex-tual artworks and/or texts. It may be observed wherever (elements of) framings make more or less independent and prominent contributions

55 Cf., for the ‘subservient position of the picture frame’ (“die dienende Stellung des Rahmens”), Simmel 1902/1922: 51, and Genette, who, in connection with the “aspect fonctionnel”, calls a paratext emphatically “un discours fondamentalement hété-ronome, auxiliaire, voué au service d’autre chose qui constitue sa raison d’être, et qui est le texte” (1987: 16).

56 Zander 1996, in an interpretation of the paratexts in Tristram Shandy, has rightly questioned Genette’s thesis of the almost absolute subserviency of the framing to the framed text; a similar questioning is appropriate in discussions of the meta-aesthetic function of frames often to be found in twentieth-century avant-garde painting (cf. Brüderlin 1995 and Traber 1995); cf. for self-centred, defamiliarized literary framings also my own contribution to this volume.

30 Werner Wolf

to the total meaning of a work (and thus take on an importance of their own) or where they refer to themselves as framings (and thus become self-reflexive). The latter case occurs, e.g., when framings are used to ‘foreground’ conventions of paratexts or constitute a space for experimental ‘games’ as in postmodernist metaleptic ‘frame-break-ings’ or ‘short-circuitings’ of narrative levels. Both the latter and the former variant of the self-centred function of framings is nicely illus-trated by Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts’ Reverse Side of a Painting

(c. 1670-1675), which is reproduced on the cover of this volume (albeit again turned 90 degrees). For this (painted) picture frame is at the same time a playful meta-referential meditation on the convention (and expectation) of framing pictures and the most important part of the trompe-l’œil painting itself, which was exhibited without a wood-en frame (see Stoichita 1993/1998: 308).

Another noteworthy function is the context-centred function. Framings frequently not only mark the inside/outside border between artefact and context (notably in pictorial framings and in the initial and terminal framings of temporal artefacts), but also help to interpret an artefact by creating a ‘bridge’ between its inside and its outside or context57. This may be done by identifying the referential object of a satire in a foreword or by giving information on intertextual frames of reference, e.g. by “indicat[ing] a tie between [a] text and the literary tradition” in an epigraph (Lanser 1981: 125).

Next comes the sender-centred function: the interpretive link, es-tablished by a framing, between the artefact and its ‘sender’ (author, painter etc.) and/or the suggestion of his or her presence in the discur-sive exchange with the recipient. In some cases this function can also be identified in the indication of certain intentions of the sender58.

57 Cf., with reference to literature, Frow 1982: 28: “[...] the contextual function of the text at the ‘edge’ of the text indicates that the frame does not simply separate an outside from an inside but mediates between the two.”

58 However, considering the well-known problematics of authorial intentions I would not over-emphasize this function in the way Genette does, for whom the main


Generally, the sender-centred function is present in all framing “mate-rial through which the [recipient] can begin to construct an image of the [sender’s] identity, beliefs and attitudes, intentions and goals” (Lanser 1981: 124)59.

Finally, there is the recipient-centred function: it is a particularly obvious interpretive aid and control and may be found in framings containing appeals to the (potential) recipient (including recipients of artefacts within artefacts), e.g. in advertisements of novels, concerts, exhibitions etc., or also, in mimetic artefacts, in strategies building up or undermining aesthetic illusion60.

It should be noted that all of these functions can be combined with,

or imply, a self-referential or even a meta-referential function: this is perhaps most obvious with respect to the self-centred function (especially in the variant where framings comment on themselves as framings), and it should also be clear for the text-centred function, as framings by definition imply meta-statements on the framed; but the context-centred function can also be self-referential (e.g. if the ‘context’ is a literary text), and the same is true of the sender- and recipient-centred functions (authors may, for instance, make aesthetic statements in paratexts, and devices in framings that play with the recipients’ aesthetic illusion obviously also serve a meta-function).

function of the paratexts (“[le] principal enjeu”) consists in the following: “assurer [au texte] un sort conforme au dessein de l’auteur” (1987: 374).

59 The attribution of such elements of worldviews to senders outside the texts is, however, a matter of debate. Alternatively, the (also debatable) notion of the ‘implied author’ as being responsible for the ‘implied worldview’ could also apply, which would then render these sender-related functions text-centred ones.

60 A famous example of a framing literary paratext intended to strengthen the reader’s aesthetic illusion is the fiction of authenticity in the “Preface” to Robinson Crusoe (1719); an equally famous contrary example for undermining aesthetic illu-sion is the passage “Before the Curtain” introducing the leading puppet-metaphor in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848). However, as in the case of the sender-centred func-tions (see preceding note), aspects of the recipient-centred functions could, through the employment of the notion of the ‘implied reader’, also be classified as textual functions.

32 Werner Wolf

The eighteen ensuing essays in this volume will substantiate both the various forms of framings and some of their functions, which have been outlined briefly in this introductory essay.

5. Perspectives for further research

In spite of the manifold aspects of framing as a transmedial phenome-non highlighted in this volume, I would like to repeat that only a few of all possible or even desirable facets could be covered. Indeed, there still remains a vast territory for future research. The following issues would be of particular interest for research in the field: 1. a continuation of the interdisciplinary approach by including areas

not as yet dealt with, in particular, the performative arts including the theatre61, moreover institutional, contextual framings such as the architecture of exhibition buildings, concert halls, opera houses, theatres etc.62; in this connection it would also be interesting to extend the research of mise-en-abyme structures from individual, already well-researched areas (such as tales within tales or plays within plays63) to fields beyond literature, notably to films within films, operas within operas etc., for in all of these cases, the ‘framing’ parts immediately preceding the framed parts regularly show a high density of ‘framings’ in the sense employed in this volume;

2. as a counterpart to the present concentration on initial framings in temporal media, a focus on terminal framings from an intermedial perspective would equally be desirable;

61 In this context one may also think of lyric poetry, in particular of longer forms and their framings.

62 For a short exploration of “art galler[ies] as fram[ings]” see MacLachlan/Reid 1994: 31 f.

63 For plays within plays see Voigt 1954, Schmeling 1977 and 1982, Hornby 1986, Vieweg-Marks 1989, and Maquerlot 1992; and for frame stories cf. Frow 1982, Sea-ger 1991, Shryock 1993, Nelles 1997, Williams 1998, Stratman 2000, and Wolf 2005.


3. a more systematic discussion of the historical development of framings both within individual media and from an intermedial perspective; even within the restricted field of a medium such as literature (for which Genette, in his monograph on paratexts, bracketed a historical perspective) a vast amount of research is still required. A mere glance at some specific topics such as the “dis-appearance of the dedication” (Lanser 1981: 129) or the develop-ment of titles reveal significant changes that await further elucida-tion: the original titles of plays in Elizabethan times and of eigh-teenth-century novels tend to be much longer than their modern counterparts, and modernist novels show a marked tendency to ‘suppress the frame’ by reducing framing elements64, while post-modernist narratives tend to foreground the framed quality of dis-course and at the same time undermine the difference of text and framing boundaries by multiplying or playing with framing. Gen-erally speaking, historical questions such as the following should be asked – and answered – in order to transcend the predominant case-study or typological approach naturally privileged in a first stage of research: In what periods are (particular) framings promi-nent? What forms do they have? What is their relationship with the framed artefact(s)? What changes within framing conventions oc-cur in the course of history? And what motivates such changes, which may be significant for a period, a literary genre or a certain aesthetic tradition?

As a precondition for approaching these desiderata one would wish for an editing and reproduction culture in which framings, including original framings, are not as frequently omitted as in many present editions of literary texts (in many paperback editions, even those for scholarly use, it is, for instance, not as yet the rule to reproduce all

64 Cf. already Furbank 1970, quoted in Hawthorn 1994: 75; Pearce 1975 extends “the suppression of the frame” (48) to traditional novels in general. This generaliza-tion is certainly too undifferentiated but could be taken as a starting point for further research.

34 Werner Wolf

original paratexts, including title pages and original frontispieces). The same applies to reproductions of paintings in volumes of art his-tory: here, too (unless one deals with monographs which particularly focus on frames, such as Mendgen, ed. 1995), the reproduction of the picture frame is regularly omitted and replaced by the white space of the book page. One would equally wish, in some cases, for more de-tailed information on the framings of architectural works by their immediate surroundings (gardens, public places, flights of stairs etc.) in books on architecture.

In spite of all the desiderata which still remain, and given the limi-tations of the present volume, it is to be hoped that the reader will find enough material to appreciate the contribution which a detailed analy-sis of framings can make to the understanding of works of literature and other media. Although, as said at the beginning, all discursive exchanges are framed, the framedness of artefacts is a special case which calls for specific, mostly overt framings as well as for a par-ticularly frequent employment of them. Investigating such framings reveals considerably more about the artefacts themselves than one would think at first glance, especially if one has tended to overlook framings. It is hoped that the present volume will contribute to an increased awareness of framings and reduce their neglect in the future.

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Framing in/through the Visual Arts

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Frames and Illusion

The Function of Borders in Late Medieval

Book Illumination

Anja Grebe

The illuminated book is generally considered as a two-dimensional medium, con-sisting of two components: text and image. To these two one has to add a third dimension, as the frame or the marginal decoration play an equally important role. Much more than the text or the miniature, the frame has to be considered as the genuine element of the illuminated book. Whereas the miniature represents a sort of reduced panel painting which has been transposed into the book, frames and borders were developed for, and exist only within, this medium. Book illumina-tors have always paid special attention to the frame and the marginal decoration. It fulfilled various functions, for example, it could help to embed the miniature in the book, or serve as an intermediary between text and images, it could be simply decorative, or, as in the case of marginal figures and scenes, provide additional narrative information. All these possibilities were at the disposal of the illumina-tors at the end of the 15th century when artists in the Netherlands and in Italy started to emphasise the three-dimensional character of the frame and made it the subject of their inventions. The trompe-l’oeil borders in Flemish manuscripts and the illusionist frontispieces in Italian early printed books underline the status of the frame as a dimension of its own. Though still serving as a form of decoration, the borders started to play a more prominent role, both visually as well as in terms of the narrative content. Besides Italian examples, the paper considers manu-scripts by the so-called Master of Mary of Burgundy and the Ghent-Bruges school. These works contain different kinds of frames and offer various possibili-ties of combinations of text, miniatures and borders. With their artful play of simulated reality and meaning these frames represent the meta-dimension of art in the book in form of a painted commentary on art.

In one of the most famous 15th-century Flemish illuminated manu-scripts, the so-called Hours of Mary of Burgundy, an elegantly dressed young woman is depicted sitting at a window-sill, reading a book (Illustration 1)1. A little dog is sitting on her lap, and precious objects,

1 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 1857, fol. 14v. Facsimile edi-tion with commentary by de Schryver/Unterkircher 1969. The following

44 Anja Grebe

jewels, and flowers are distributed around her. The room is an oratory opening on the choir of a Gothic cathedral in the background. In front of the main altar, the Virgin Mary is shown sitting on a fine carpet, surrounded by angels and adored by a young lady in a splendid brocade dress, while on the other side, a cleric in a red cape is busy swinging a censer.

Illustration 1: Hours of Mary of Burgundy: Double page with first “Window Miniature” and Marian Prayer by Thomas Becket, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 1857, fol. 14v-15r (© Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek)

The picture is generally interpreted as a representation of a vision2: while reciting her daily devotion, the lady in the foreground is thought to perceive the Virgin, whom she is addressing in her prayers, with her inner eye. The window is not a mere oratory window but is trans-

interpretation is based on Grebe 1999 and Grebe 2000/2002: 1-9, 228-233. On the state of research on the anonymous “Vienna Master of Mary of Burgundy” see Kren/McKendrick, eds. 2003: 126-157. I would like to express my gratitude to Martin Baumeister for his many helpful comments and corrections.

2 See Belting 1995: 56.

Frames and Illusion in Late Medieval Book Illumination 45

formed into a gateway to a different, a visionary world. From within the frame of every-day life and every-day religious practice, the spec-tator is granted a glimpse of the divine sphere. Thanks to the ‘trick with the window’ everyone may take part in the vision.

However, on closer examination, certain doubts arise as to whether the illuminator is not really playing tricks on the spectator. First of all, the lady in the foreground is attentively looking down at the page, which means that she is actually reading her book. This active reading totally contradicts the way 15th-century Flemish painters usually de-picted people having a visionary experience. To indicate a vision oc-curring, they invariably represented the protagonists with a prayer book opened in front of them, but not reading it, like the Chancellor Rolin in the famous Rolin Madonna painted by Jan van Eyck3. In-stead, the person is always shown looking vaguely in the direction of the saint appearing in the vision. In the few cases when the painter represented a person actually reading in a sacred context this is never in relation to a vision. In Rogier van der Weyden’s Altar of the Seven

Sacraments from ca. 1440-14454, for instance, the reading woman in the foreground of the right part of the altarpiece is the only one not taking part in the vision of the Redeemer on the Cross. This leads to the conclusion that the young woman in the Hours of Mary of

Burgundy may seem to be quite absorbed by her reading, but she is certainly not having a vision. The only person who might be having a vision in this miniature is the elegant lady in the church choir who is indeed represented with the distant, ‘inner’ look typical of visions.

The conclusion, that the painter did not depict a vision at prayers but merely a praying woman, is underlined by the fact that the framed miniature is the illustration of a Marian prayer by Thomas Becket, which begins on the facing recto page (fol. 15r). In a comparison of the two pages, the young lady in the oratory occupies the same posi-

3 Paris, Louvre, Inv. No. 1271. See Comblen-Sonkes/Lorentz 1995: 11-80.

4 Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Inv. No. 393-395. See De Vos 1999: 217-225.

46 Anja Grebe

tion as the floral border of the right hand page, where a little monkey is trying to swat a bird fluttering among the ornamental leaves. Com-pared to the drollery monkey, the window scene on the left, with its still-life of precious items and flowers, is a very realistic version of the traditional Gothic “images in the margins” (Randall 1966, title).

The illuminated book is generally considered a two-dimensional medium, consisting of two components: word/text and image5. But in addition to the image as an illustration of the writing, there exists a third dimension, the frame or the marginal decoration, which plays an equally important role. Much more than the text or the large minia-ture, the frame or border6 has to be considered as a characteristic and defining element of the illuminated book. Whereas the miniature gen-erally represents some sort of downsized panel painting which has been transposed into the book, the border decoration, like the initial7, was developed for, and existed only within, this medium. Book illu-minators had always tended to pay special attention to the frame. It fulfilled various functions, for example, it could help to embed the miniature in the book, or serve as an intermediary between text and images, or, visually speaking, between flat surface and space8. It could simply be decorative, or, in the case of marginal figures and scenes, provide additional narrative information. From the beginning, the border was the chosen place for commentary, both written and painted9. As with written glosses, commentaries in painting can make

5 Pächt 1984: 173 sees the history of the illuminated book as a conflict between surface and space (“Konflikt Fläche – Raum”), provoked by the three-dimensional image intruding into the two-dimensional surface of the page.

6 As no definitions of the different forms of marginal decoration exist which could take into account the multitude of individual variants, ‘frame’ and ‘border’ are em-ployed synonymously here. Both terms describe a form of marginal decoration which encloses a text or image in the centre by surrounding it from at least three sides.

7 Cf. Jakobi-Mirwald 1998.

8 This is one of the functions of the architectural frame in Ottonian and Gothic illumination. For examples see Pächt 1984: 190-200.

9 Cf. Steinmeyer/Sievers 1879-1922 on the Apokalypse-Ms.


more or less sense. Some are very personal remarks, some are even risky or obscene10, and some provide complementary information11.

The fact that the illuminator of the Book of Hours of Mary of Bur-

gundy was very much aware of the tradition of the ‘image in the mar-gin’ is confirmed by the second window miniature in the book (fol. 43v) (Illustration 2).

Illustration 2: Hours of Mary of Burgundy: Double page with second “Window Miniature” and Office of the Passion, Vienna, Österreichi-sche Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 1857, fol. 43v-44r (© Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek)

With its still-life of precious objects displayed on a window-sill, and the view of a holy scene in the centre, the picture at first looks like the continuation of the previous miniature. It seems that the lady has just left her seat in the oratory, leaving behind all her prayer utensils and precious belongings. On closer inspection, however, a lot of details that do not match become apparent: to begin with, the inner frame is not a double window, but a Gothic arch with marble columns framed 10 On the subversive character of margins in medieval art see Camille 1992.

11 This is the case with the so-called ‘historiated border’ discussed below.

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by two sculptures on consoles. The prayer-book’s green textile cover has been replaced by a black one, and the rosary is different as well. Instead of seeing a representation of a vision taking place in a con-temporary church choir (the woman praying in front of the altar), the spectator is now looking at a scene from the Bible. In the centre, Christ is being nailed to the cross, a scene which forms a correct illus-tration in terms of iconography of the Office of the Passion beginning on the right hand page (fol. 44r).

Both of the pages discussed above toy with the two main concepts of border design in books: narration and decoration. With their still-life borders, the window scenes represent a realistic counterpart to the traditional floral border, the isolated decorative elements being put to order, thereby forming a coherent scene. With regard to the content, a continuity between framing and framed exists in the form of typo-logical allusions (the statues of the Sacrifice of Isaac and Moses with the Serpent). By inserting two very similar window miniatures into the book, the illuminator also suggests a narrative continuity. The pages are not only related through a similar layout, but seem to form a story, which, however, does not make sense. Though at first the two miniatures seem almost identical, under close scrutiny they reveal completely different settings and situations. The very play of narra-tion, decoration, similarity, and meaning, perfectly fits into the con-cept of medieval marginal imagery. The ‘images in the margins’ rarely make sense, but instead seem to actually avoid meaning, thus adding a playful note to text and miniatures in the centre12.

By uniting the separate elements in a comprehensive design, the il-luminator has obscured the traditional borderline between miniature and frame. The frame now seems to form a logical part of the story represented in the miniature in the centre, even more so as objects like the open prayer books and the rosary seem to function as ‘markers’ or clues with regard to the main scene. However, the comprehensive per-

12 Cf. Randall 1966.


spective actually forms a kind of trap. Though the woman in the ora-tory seems to form a ‘cognitive frame’ to the visionary scene in the centre, her active reading separates framing and framed into two diffe-rent worlds. The same applies to the supposed narrative continuity of the two pictures. With their simulated continuity, the sequence of the two miniatures exemplifies a new form of marginal concept which

could be designated as narrative illusion. It represents a highly so-phisticated type of framing in late medieval art.

Since the ‘birth’ of the codex in late antiquity13, medieval book art-ists have always been conscious of the role of the frame in book illu-mination. It seems that with the spread of printing in the second part of the 15th century, artists tried to invent new ways to emphasise the importance of the medium of illumination. They did so by stressing the role and function of the frame as the third and most characteristic dimension of the illuminated book, which hence becomes the starting-point of the three-dimensional concept of the entire page. Books dating from the close of the 15th century offer a whole range of different forms of illusionist page designs.

Along with the Flemish illuminators, and even before them, North Italian artists had reacted to the challenge of the new medium of the printed book. In contrast to Italian manuscripts of the second half of the 15th century, which mostly preserve the traditional Renaissance floral borders, hand-illuminated incunabula show an entirely new form of book decoration14. In this kind of book, the individual page is no longer treated as a flat surface, but is transformed into a simulated three-dimensional architecture. In addition, Venetian illuminators who worked for distinguished humanist patrons developed a method of giving printed books the appearance of a manuscript. With the ‘help’

13 Cf. Pächt 1984: 13-31 (“From scroll to codex“), and Weitzmann 1947/1970.

14 See Alexander, ed. 1994 for a survey of Italian book illumination of the 15th and 16th centuries, and specifically the article by Armstrong 1994 on hand-illuminated printed books in Italy.

50 Anja Grebe

of the frame, they gave the incunabula back the exclusivity of a hand-written and illuminated book.

Among the first examples of this new style there is an edition of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, printed in Venice in 1469 by the German printer Johannes de Spira (Illustration 3).

Illustration 3: Gaius Plinius Secundus, Naturalis Historia: Frontis-piece, Ravenna, Biblioteca Classense, Inc. 670/I, p. 1 (© Ravenna, Biblioteca Classense)


One of the deluxe copies of the Pliny, printed on parchment15 and probably made for the Paduan bishop Jacopo Zeno, is of special inter-est with regard to the new style of illumination16. On its monumental architectural frontispiece, the printed text appears to have been hand-written on an ancient parchment scroll, which is unfurled by winged putti. Other putti seem to disappear behind the scroll. The illusion that the text is not a printed page but indeed an ancient hand-written document is further stressed by the seal with the arms of the owner which seems to be affixed to the parchment scroll. As Mariani Canova states, Pliny’s text is thus actually displayed like an ancient relic17.

A blue shadow behind the edifice throws the whole architecture into relief. The monumental architecture is not so much a frame, but a backdrop for the text that is displayed like a real object. The new technique of the printed book literally supplants the old medium of the manuscript, which is henceforth simulated in painting. The archi-tecture serves to highlight the aesthetic difference between the old and the new forms of the text. Thus, the illuminated incunabula contain two forms of illusion. The text no longer occupies a space of its own, but becomes part of the pictorial representation, it is practically treated as an object. The putti serve as playful intermediaries between the text scroll and the background architecture.

We witness here the birth of a twofold illusion, one concerning the material level (the printed parchment becomes a three-dimensional object and part of the pictorial representation) and the other concern-ing the media level (the printed text is represented as an ancient, hand-illuminated parchment scroll). The framing enacts the framed both as

15 On this phenomenon see Armstrong 1994: 36: “Throughout the 1470s and 1480s it was common practice to print up to twenty copies of a given edition on parchment, further emphasising the parallel to manuscript.”

16 Gaius Plinius Secundus, Historia naturalis, vol. 1, Ravenna, Biblioteca Classense, Inc. 670/I. In her catalogue entry in Alexander, ed. 1994: 163-164, Giordana Mariani Canova ascribes the frontispiece on p. 1 to the painter Giovanni Vendramin from Padua.

17 Catalogue entry in Alexander, ed. 1994: 163.

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a different medium and material. By the means of illusion, the text becomes literally more ‘seizable’.

However, not only the text, but the miniature as well can be trans-formed into a three-dimensional object. In a Bible printed by John’s brother Vindelinus (Wendelin) de Spira in 1471, the illuminator, probably the Venice Master of the Putti, gives one of the miniatures the appearance of an independent panel painting presented by two putti holding the picture frame on both sides18.

The highly reflective way in which illuminators reacted to the new medium of print by enacting the traditional elements of the page in a twofold illusion described above is underlined by another type of frontispiece simulating a rotten piece of parchment hung from a monumental architecture. In the frontispiece of an edition of Justin-ian’s Digests printed in 147719, the trompe-l’oeil of the rotten sheet of parchment becomes an artistic game of hide-and-seek between the different levels of representation, as the parchment seems to cover parts of the underlying pictures and objects. With their twofold illu-sion, the frontispieces of North Italian incunabula can be interpreted as artful painted commentaries on the new medium of the printed book inasmuch as the page contains both the (real) printed text and its ‘old’, rotten version, which, however, is an illusion.

The painted metamedial reflection on materials and media resulted in a fundamental change of perspective. Traditionally, the function of the border was to add a ‘decorative comment’ on the text or picture in the centre. Now, with the border achieving a pictorial quality of its own, the relationship between framing and framed becomes more and

18 Biblia, Italian, printed in Venice by Vindelinus de Spira, 1 August 1471, 2 vols, New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library, PML 26983/26984 (ChLff722). The illu-mination discussed is the frontispiece of vol. 2, fol. 3v, with the miniature showing an apocryphal judgement of Salomon. See Alexander, ed. 1994: 166-168.

19 Justinianus, Digestum novum, with the Glossa ordinaria of Accursius, printed in Venice by Nicolaus Jenson in 1477, illuminated by Benedetto Padovano (Benedetto Bordon), Venice or Padua, ca. 1477, fol. 2r. See Alexander, ed. 1994: 193-195.


more complex and even inverted, especially in those cases where the framed part is not a text but a picture.

From about 1475 on, artists in the Burgundian Netherlands, above all in Ghent and Bruges, seem to have entered into competition with each other to create ever more audacious borders as well as different combinations of frames, texts and miniatures. The window-scene miniatures in the Hours of Mary of Burgundy represent two early an-swers by Flemish illuminators to this new challenge. In preference, devotional books such as prayer-books, books of hours, and breviar-ies, were thus transformed into veritable collections of different border types and layouts20.

The so-called Book of Hours of Engelbert of Nassau, from ca. 1475, is perhaps the earliest example of the new concept of framing in illuminated books north of the Alps21. In this manuscript, the border no longer appears as a flat surface, but is treated as a three-dimen-sional frame on which different kinds of collectibles, for instance pilgrims’ badges or jewels, are displayed. The objects are not simply distributed over the background, but are literally attached to it, as the jewels which are pinned upon the feigned velvet underground (fol. 40r). The centre, containing the text and the miniature, is treated as a three-dimensional panel which lies on the background border and even casts shadows. The formerly distinct elements of the page are unified in a single perspective. Similar to the Italian Renaissance in-cunabula, the frame is no longer a secondary decorative feature but has become an essential part of the page which contains the text/min-iature22.

20 On the concept of the book as a collection see Grebe 2000/2002: 241-245.

21 Hours of Engelbert of Nassau, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Douce 219-220. For a partial reprint of the manuscript see Alexander 1970. See Grebe 2000/2002: 31-94 for a detailed study of the book and its layout.

22 See Stoichita 1993/1998: 30-45 on the still-life or parergon becoming the main ‘text’ or ergon. See below for other examples of ‘inverted illusions’.

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Whereas in the first examples the central text panel or miniature was lying on the background border, there are several pages in the manu-script which show an inverted perspective. In the section of the Hours of the Virgin, the opening of the Sext is illustrated by two scenes from the story of the Three Magi (fol. 145v-146r) (Illustration 4).

Illustration 4: Hours of Engelbert of Nassau: Double page with alcove border, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce 219-220, fol. 145v-146r (© Oxford, Bodleian Library)

The border seems to consist of a series of alcoves, giving the double-page the appearance of a window surrounded by cupboards. A variety of pots and dishes, flower vases, and pieces of majolica with Moorish designs are displayed in these niches. They could be the counterparts of the precious vessels the Three Magi gave as presents to the Infant Jesus, which are now exhibited in this simulated collection. With their niche-like layout, these pages also represent a variant of the window page concept in the Hours of Mary of Burgundy discussed above.

A rather morbid version of the alcove-window border graces the opening page of the Office of the Dead, where a burial scene set in a graveyard is accompanied by a series of grinning skulls (fol. 214r). In


the bottom part, one reads the motto of the book’s owner, Engelbert of Nassau, “Ce sera moy” (“This will be me”), which here takes on the additional meaning of a memento mori. In the last two examples, the frame functions as a kind of key-hole through which one is granted a glimpse on the sacred story. The frame is no longer an addition, but a condition of the framed.

The new illusionist concept of the page did not only have an aes-thetic impact, but also affected the traditional form of manuscript pro-duction. Up to the invention of the illusionist page design, the distinc-tion of miniature and border often ran parallel with a distinction of artists’ hands: the miniatures were formerly executed by a so-called historieur or ‘scenic painter’, whereas a so-called enlumineur or ‘dec-orative painter’ took charge of the borders23. Now, a single illuminator was responsible for the entire page. The page design follows a single concept, and from the point of view of perspective the frame is as much a part of the picture as the picture itself.

Visually, the difference between miniature and frame has been re-duced, but in regard to their contents, it continues to exist in some respects. In the so-called ‘Voustre demeure’-Hours, from ca. 1475/ 1480, now divided between Madrid and Berlin24, the frames not only share the same perspective with the large miniature in the centre, but even become part of the narration. This book of hours contains several examples of the so-called ‘historiated’ border, a term inspired by the historiated initial25, meaning that the whole border is now occupied by

23 See the documents quoted in De Schryver 1969. Cf. Reynolds 2003.

24 The ‘Voustre demeure’-Hours, made for an unknown patron whose motto, ‘Voustre demeure’, appears in some of the borders. Other borders show the inter-twined monogram “C+M” of Duke Charles the Bold and his second wife Margaret of York. The large miniatures are painted on single leaves which were cut off and sold separately at an unknown date, probably in the 17th century. A volume with 20 large miniatures bound together is now in Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbe-sitz, Kupferstichkabinett, Inv. No. 78 B 13. The codex is in Madrid, Biblioteca Nacio-nal, Vit. 25-5. On the state of research see Kren/Mc Kendrick, eds. 2003: 142-146.

25 See Jakobi-Mirwald 1998, who bases her definition of the historiated initial on its relationship to the text with regard to the content. Cf. Pächt 1984: 77-95 for a more

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a continuous narrative into which the text or miniature has been inte-grated. With regards to the page design, the text is a simulated panel or screen which is superimposed upon the background picture, so that parts of the underlying picture seem to be covered or cut off.

The beginning of the Hours of the Cross is illustrated and sur-rounded by the story of the Passion of Christ (Illustration 5).

Illustration 5: ‘Voustre demeure’-Hours: Double page with opening of the Hours of the Cross (reconstruction: Anja Grebe) (© Archive of the Author; reproduced from Winkler 1925)

If the reconstruction of the double-page first proposed by Hulin de Loo is correct26, the narration begins on the miniature on the left hand side, with the scenes of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. The story is then continued in the historiated border on the right side with the Ecce homo-scene at the bottom, and the fainting Virgin Mary depicted in the right hand margin. The next episode, shown in the upper margin, is the Carrying of the Cross. The story then jumps back to the

formal definition of the historiated initial, though his distinction between the ‘histori-ated’ and ‘inhabited’ (“bewohnte”) initial remains unclear.

26 Hulin de Loo 1939: 177-178. Cf. Lieftinck 1969: 98-105, Brinkmann 1997: 185-191.


left hand side, forming a narrative loop which ends in the Crucifixion scene in the centre. Quite unusually, the main miniature with the crucifixion has been transformed into an oval devotional picture, which appears to have been stuck onto the underlying scene of the Garden of Gethsemane.

The notion of displaying the whole story of the Passion on the first double-page of the Office is not really new. A common method was to insert the different episodes as little medallions in the border of the text page, like in a Book of Hours illuminated in Paris in ca. 1450, now in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore27. In comparison, the illuminator of the ‘Voustre demeure’-Hours has linked the separate scenes to form a continuous, multi-scene story28. On the right hand side, the marginal story is surrounded by a painted picture frame and thus claims the status of a miniature.

The question of status equally concerns the text which has been transformed into a kind of poster stretched across the underlying pic-ture and fixed to its outer framing line. Like in the Italian incunabula, the text is no longer a neutral element of the page but has gained a new materiality and participates in the pictorial illusion. The frame is not so much the depiction of a biblical story, but the representation of a real painting that contains this story. Compared to the window miniatures, the recto-page forms some kind of “inverted window-aspect” (Pächt 1948: 32). The frame does not enclose the centre but virtually exhibits it, a form of marginal play which could be called an

‘inverted’ illusion or ‘inverted’ framing in contrast to the conception of the frame as a window through which one perceives an image. The text still occupies the centre of the page, yet it seems ‘marginalised’ in its importance and literally ‘depends’ on the frame.

27 Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, MS W. 251, fol. 109r. Cf. Wieck, ed. 1988: 90, ill. 53.

28 The specific distribution of the scenes bears many parallels to medieval theatre, e.g. passion plays. Cf. Pochat 1990: 41-51.

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Considering that this double-page is a work by an accomplished il-luminator, it is curious that the initial letter should be missing. Its customary position is marked by the way the ropes are stretched across the upper left hand corner, so that the detail with Christ carry-ing the Cross becomes some kind of miniature within a miniature. In its centre, Christ becomes a figural replacement for the missing initial. Quite probably, the letter was left out on purpose in order not to dis-turb the effect of the ‘inverted framing ’. This hypothesis is, in a way, confirmed by an almost literal copy of the double-page in the so-called ‘La Flora’-Hours, illuminated by several Flemish artists around 150029. In this manuscript the illuminator has corrected the ‘error’ of his elder colleague by inserting the initial “D” into the text block (fol. 59v-60r). He was able to do so because he left out the ropes, instead surrounding the double-page with a feigned sculptured frame, which is an additional feature as the original double-page already possessed outer frames. The simulated sculptured frame can be thus interpreted

as a kind of painted quotation mark, another function of framing in medieval manuscript illumination. By adding the extra ‘quotation mark’ frame, the illuminator of the ‘La Flora’-Hours made clear that the framed composition was not his own invention but taken from another source, possibly at the special request of his patron. This points to a highly developed culture of connoisseurship, where books of hours were no longer regarded as mere devotional aids but as desirable objects of collection, as the following examples will under-line.

The visual interplay of text, miniature and border as well as their respective status grew more and more complex within the last decades of the 15th century. With the ‘help’ of the border, the large miniature, too, started to be included in the illusionist concept of the page and finally became the main focus of the illuminators. One of the solutions was to materialise the frame or border, with the effect that the 29 Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, I.B.51. Cf. De Maio 1992. According to Brinkmann (1997: 209) the double-page is a later addition to the book.


miniatures appear as small panel paintings inside the book. They lose their status as mere illustrations, and become objects of devotion. In the Prayer-Book of Johanna of Castile, illuminated in Bruges between 1492-150630, an anonymous illuminator called the Master of the David Scenes has inserted a small image of the Virgin, after the model of a popular Madonna by Rogier van der Weyden (fol. 287v-288r) (Illustration 6). Whereas most of the large miniatures in the manuscript are surrounded by a decorative border which follows the traditional layout, with a broader bottom part and outer margins, and narrow inner and top margins, here all the parts of the frame are of equal size. The frame imitates that of contemporary panel paintings. We do not know if Johanna, who is represented on the right hand side, possessed a copy of the Madonna by Rogier31. But by having this picture inserted in her prayer book, she was able to keep it in sight at all times, whether saying her prayers or just looking at the pictures in the manuscript. At the same time, the illumination also offered a way of possessing at least a miniature ‘reproduction’ of the famous work of art. The Prayer-Book of Johanna of Castile is a prominent example of the illuminated manuscript’s becoming a painted collection of artis-tically exemplary miniatures, paintings, borders, and page designs, with the frame playing the leading role32.

In contrast to those miniatures imitating devotional images, others were transformed into simulated copies of normally far larger altar-pieces. In the Rothschild Prayer-Book in Vienna, the prayer to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux is illustrated by a scene from the legend of the saint surrounded by a rich late-gothic tracery frame which is set on the bare vellum ground33. Only its broader outer and bottom parts indicate

30 London, British Library, Add. Ms. 18852, fol. 287v-288r.

31 On the Madonna lactans by Rogier van der Weyden and several extant copies by other Early Netherlandish painters see De Vos 1999: 298-301.

32 Cf. Grebe 2001.

33 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. Ser. n. 2844, fol. 245v. Cf. Unterkircher 1984: 138-139.

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that this feigned altarpiece is part of an illustrated manuscript. This form of feigned frame represents another sort of painted quotation mark, transposing the framed scene into another medium.

Illustration 6: Prayer-Book of Johanna of Castile: Double page with Johanna at prayers, London, British Library, Add. Ms. 18852, fol. 287v-288r (© London, British Library)

When the miniature is not surrounded by a decorative or architec-tural frame, but by a pictorial representation, as in the case of a his-toriated border, the two pictorial levels could be combined by various methods. The first solution was to simply ‘stick’ the miniature onto the underlying picture, as in the example of the Hours of the Cross in the ‘Voustre demeure’-Hours. A late echo of this solution can be found in the Grimani-Breviary from about 151534. In the miniature illustrating the Office of the Dead (fol. 449v) we see a view of a con-temporary interior with a man on his death bed, the whole taking on the form of a medallion pasted on the underlying landscape, contain-

34 Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, Ms. lat. I.99. Cf. Grote 1973.


ing a representation of the Legend of the Three Living and the Three Dead. The medallion itself has the strange effect of a voyeuristic look through a keyhole.

Illustration 7: Rothschild Prayer-Book: Miniature with Christmas scenes, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. ser. nov. 2844, fol. 108v (© Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek)

A second way of combining miniature and frame in a single per-spective was to join the two pictorial levels into one image, merely retaining the inner frame that divides the two pictures. In the part of the Hours of the Virgin in the Vienna Rothschild Prayer-Book, the opening of Prime is illustrated by a representation of the Birth of

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Christ, which is superimposed upon the underlying image of Mary and Joseph looking for shelter at Bethlehem (fol. 108v). The inner frame has an ambivalent function: on the one hand, it serves to integrate the two pictorial levels into a unified composition, but on the other hand, it is also a dividing line. With regards to the theology of the image in the Middle Ages, the inner scene with the adoration of the newborn Child is a devotional image whereas the framing picture was traditionally understood as a genre scene, even though both are taken from the Bible35 (Illustration 7). By stressing the separation of the two levels, it is made clear that the Christmas scene in the centre represents another – and a more important – moment of the story, and should not be understood as an enlarged detail of the surrounding scene.

The frame fulfils an enhancing function, it embeds and intensifies the central picture both visually and with regard to the content. Instead of stressing the separation of the two pictorial levels, other illu-minators thought of ways of linking together both parts more closely. In most cases, it is the background that serves to connect the former miniature and its frame. The upper right hand corner – the traditional position of the initial letter on a text page – frequently serves as a vi-sual bridge or pivotal joint. In a miniature showing Saint Christopher, in a Hortulus Animae manuscript illuminated by Simon Bening36, the giant saint is depicted in the act of carrying Jesus across an expanse of water (Illustration 8).

In the foreground, fishermen, who do not seem to notice the holy pair, are busy hauling in their nets just as night is falling. The central group is visually detached from the rest of the picture by the inner frame. It is thus raised to the status of a devotional image within an image. This new status is underlined by the larger size of the figures,

35 Cf. Schade 1996 on the term ‘devotional image’ or ‘Andachtsbild’.

36 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 2706, fol. 258v.


the resulting effect resembling that of a cinematic ‘close-up’37. The joint background obscures the traditional separation of the sacred scene in the centre and the genre scene in the margin. By combining the two pictorial levels in a ‘joint’ illusion, the interplay of picture frame and full-page miniature appears to have reached its final stage.

Illustration 8: Hortulus Animae: Saint Christopher, Vienna, Österrei-chische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 2706, fol. 258v (© Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek)

37 On the development of the close-up in late-medieval art see Ringbom 1965.

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This example shows that Bening was fully aware of the hybrid status of the frame, which he took as a starting-point of his paradoxi-cal enactment between framing and framed. Indeed, the eye of the viewer constantly oscillates between the different pictorial spaces, which traditionally constituted different levels of reality. The minia-ture is a highly self-reflective mise en abyme as well as a metaleptic comment on the inherent possibilities, the strategies and the functions of frames and framing in book illumination. The frame/margin being the traditional place for comments and additions, the frame in the Hortulus Animae forms not only an additional pictorial component sharing some background details with the main devotional scene in the centre, but it is above all a painted comment on the role of the frame in the history of book illumination. Framing here becomes a form of meta-painting.

Yet, in several Flemish manuscripts dating from the beginning of the 16th century, the concept of the joint illusion is developed even further. The Requiem Mass in the Spinola Hours38, attributed to the anonymous Master of James IV of Scotland, is illustrated by a minia-ture showing a view of a building both from the inside and the out-side. The former inner frame now corresponds to the outer wall, creat-ing the effect of the former large miniature occupying the interior space, while the former frame now represents the exterior façade of the building. The open door links the two zones into one continuous space and one continuous story.

In the examples discussed so far, the illusionistic representation never really exceeded the surrounding outer frame but stayed within its own pictorial world. There are a few examples, however, where some elements try to intrude into the world of the spectator by cross-ing the borderline between image and reality. The favourite trespasser of Flemish illuminators was the dragonfly. This insect would appear to be attracted to the trompe-l’oeil flowers shown in the frame, trying 38 Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. Ludwig IX 18, fol. 184v-185r. See Von Euw/Plotzek 1982: 256-285. Kren/McKendrick, eds. 2003: 414-417.


to alight on them, like in the Hours of Lord William Hastings in the British Library39. The dragonfly, generally rendered in a highly virtu-oso manner, alludes to the concept and the praise of mimesis transmit-ted in ancient artists’ legends40. In the Flemish manuscripts, it not only serves to underline the artist’s virtuosity, but is also used as a visual trick to increase the illusion of the frame.

To conclude, the examples discussed clearly show that the artists saw the illuminated book as a medium consisting of three basic ele-ments: text, image, and border. The reaction of the illuminators to the invention of printing and the technical reproduction of text and images was to emphasise the three-dimensional character of the decoration and to make it the subject of a variety of new inventions. The different illusionistic page designs discussed above show the emphasis placed on the importance of the frame as a dimension of its own. Though they never lost their traditional decorative function, the borders played an increasingly prominent role, both visually as well as in regard to their narrative content. In the end, the resulting books were not just a mere assembly of texts and images, they also became a collection of frames and concepts of illusion.

As to the broader question of framing, the new unified view at first suggests a coherent ‘text’ of the entire page. However, the depicted reality of the frame is only a simulated one. Thus, the border cannot easily be taken as a guideline for the interpretation of the framed pic-torial or textual ‘message’, but occupies a very ambivalent position. With its artful play with simulated reality and meaning the frame represents the meta-dimension of art in the book in form of a painted commentary on art.

39 This, for example, is the case in the Hastings Hours, London, British Library, Add. Ms. 54782, fol. 65r. See the partial facsimile and commentary by Turner 1983 and Backhouse 1996.

40 See Kris/Kurz 1995.

66 Anja Grebe

References

Alexander, Jonathan J. G. (1970). The Master of Mary of Burgundy: A Book of Hours for Engelbert of Nassau. New York, NY: George Braziller.

—, ed. (1994). The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumina-tion 1450-1550. Munich/New York, NY: Prestel.

Armstrong, Lilian (1994). “The Hand-Illumination of Printed Books in Italy 1465-1515”. Alexander, ed. 35-47.

Backhouse, Janet (1996). The Hastings Hours. London: The British Library.

Belting, Hans (1995). “Die Erfindung des Gemäldes: Ästhetik und Weltbezug des neuen Staffeleibildes”. Hans Belting, Christiane Kruse. Die Erfindung des Gemäldes: Das erste Jahrhundert der niederländischen Malerei. Munich: Hirmer. 33-93.

Brinkmann, Bodo (1997). Flämische Buchmalerei am Ende des Bur-gunderreichs: Der Meister des Dresdener Gebetbuchs und die Mi-niaturisten seiner Zeit. 2 vols. Turnhout: Brepols.

Camille, Michael (1992). Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medie-val Art. London: Reaction Books.

Comblen-Sonkes, Micheline, Philippe Lorentz (1995). Musée du Louvre, Paris. Vol. 2 : Corpus de la peinture des anciens Pays-Bas méridionaux et de la principauté de Liège au quinzième siècle 17. Brussels: Centre International d’Etude de la Peinture Médiévale des Bassins et de la Meuse.

De Maio, Romeo (1992). Il Codice Flora: Una pinacoteca miniata nella Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli. Naples: Pironti Ed.

De Schryver, Antoine (1969). “Nicolas Spierinc: Calligraphe et en-lumineur des ordonnances des états de l’hôtel de Charles le Téméraire”. Scriptorium 23: 434-458.

—, Franz Unterkircher (1969). Gebetbuch Karls des Kühnen vel po-tius Stundenbuch der Maria von Burgund: Codex Vindobonensis 1857 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek. Facs. and comm. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt.

De Vos, Dirk (1999). Rogier van der Weyden: Das Gesamtwerk. Mu-nich: Hirmer.

Eberlein, Johann Konrad (1995). Miniatur und Arbeit: Das Medium Buchmalerei. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Grebe, Anja (1999). “Die Fensterbilder des sogenannten Meisters der Maria von Burgund”. Christiane Kruse, Felix Thürlemann, eds.


Porträt – Landschaft – Interieur: Jan van Eycks Rolin-Madonna im ästhetischen Kontext. Tübingen: Narr. 257-271.

— (2000/2002). Die Ränder der Kunst: Buchgestaltung in den bur-gundischen Niederlanden nach 1470. Diss. Universität Konstanz/ Microfiche Erlangen: Harald Fischer.

— (2001). “Dirk Bouts und die Gent-Brügger Buchmalerei”. Bert Cardon et al., eds. Bouts Studies: Proceedings of the International Colloquium Leuven, 26-28 November 1998. Leuven: Peeters. 331-344.

Grote, Andreas, ed. (1973). Breviarium Grimani. Facs. and comm. Berlin: Gebrüder Mann.

Hulin de Loo, Georges (1939). “La vignette chez les enlumineurs gantois entre 1470 et 1500”. Bulletin de l’Académie royale de Belgique: Classe des Beaux-Arts 21: 158-180.

Jakobi-Mirwald, Christine (1998). Text – Buchstabe – Bild: Studien zur historisierenden Initiale im 8. und 9. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Rei-mer.

Kren, Thomas, Scott McKendrick, eds. (2003). Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe. Exhibition Catalogue Los Angeles/London. Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Trust.

Kris, Ernst, Otto Kurz (1995). Die Legende vom Künstler: Ein ge-schichtlicher Versuch. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Lieftinck, Gerard Isaak (1969). Boekverluchters uit de omgeving van Maria van Bourgondië, c. 1475-1485. 2 vols. Brussels: Paleis d. Acad.

Pächt, Otto (1948). The Master of Mary of Burgundy. London: Faber and Faber.

— (1984). Buchmalerei des Mittelalters: Eine Einführung. Munich: Prestel.

Pochat, Götz (1990). Theater und bildende Kunst im Mittelalter und in der Renaissance in Italien. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Ver-lagsanstalt.

Randall, Lilian M. C. (1966). Images in the Margins of Gothic Manu-scripts. Berkeley, CA/Los Angeles, CA: Univ. of California Press.

Reynolds, Catherine (2003). “Illuminators and the Painters’ Guilds”. Kren/McKendrick, eds. 15-33.

Ringbom, Sixten (1965). From Icon to Narrative: The Rise of the Dramatic Close-up in Fifteenth-century Devotional Painting. Abo: Abo Akademi (Acta Academiae Aboensis, Ser. A, Vol. 31/2).

68 Anja Grebe

Schade, Karl (1996). Andachtsbild: Die Geschichte eines kunsthis-torischen Begriffs. Weimar: Verlag und Datenbank für Geisteswis-senschaften.

Steinmeier, Elias, Eduard Sievers (1879-1922). Die althochdeutschen Glossen. 5 vols. Berlin: Weidmann.

Stoichita, Victor I. (1993/1998). L’Instauration du tableau: Das selbstbewußte Bild. Vom Ursprung der Metamalerei. Text und Kritik. Transl. Heinz Jatho. Munich: Fink.

Turner, Derek H. (1983). The Hastings Hours. London: Thames and Hudson.

Unterkircher, Franz (1984). Das Rothschild-Gebetbuch: Die schönsten Miniaturen eines flämischen Stundenbuches. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt.

Von Euw, Anton, Joachim M. Plotzek (1982). Die Handschriften der Sammlung Ludwig. Vol. 2. Cologne: Schnütgen-Museum.

Weitzmann, Kurt (1947/1970). Illustrations in Roll and Codex. Repr. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press (Studies in Manuscript Illumination 2).

Wieck, Roger S., ed. (1988). Time Sanctified: The Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life. New York, NY/Baltimore, MD: Braziller.

Winkler, Friedrich (1925). Die flämische Buchmalerei des XV. und XVI. Jahrhunderts: Künstler und Werke von den Brüdern van Eyck bis zu Simon Bening. Leipzig: Seemann.

How to Frame the Vera Icon?

Vera Beyer

The picture frame, according to Louis Marin, can be understood as an operator turning an empirical representation into a legitimate representation. This paper traces changing framings and hence changing legitimizations in the history of an image, which might have a special need to legitimize itself, given that it claims to be the true image – the ‘vera icon’ – of Christ’s face. The 14th-century frame of the Genoa Mandylion not only attributes an auratic surplus value in the form of golden framing but contains representations of the story of its miraculous creation – and thus provides a narrative legitimization of the adoration of the image. In Fouquet’s miniature of the 15th century this narrative framing takes over the whole image and thereby reframes the (then so-called) vera icon in ‘quotation marks’. In the 17th century Zurbarán still ‘only’ quotes the vera icon but leaves behind narrative frameworks and thereby reduces the distance between a ‘quoted’ and an actually present vera icon. Consequently, his painting is double framed – and legitimized – by the ‘quotation mark’ of the depicted linen and a golden auratic frame. As a kind of an aftermath of the golden times of the vera icon at the end of the 18th century a position of the torero presenting the capa to the bull is baptised ve-ronica. Hence the question is whether the way the veronica is presented in the framework of particularly Goya’s tauromaquia corresponds to the ways ‘true im-ages’ work in Goya’s prints. Here frames are wooden, to frame means to kill, and frames do not legitimize what they include but protect the spectator from mislead-ing games with coloured textiles.

Le cadre est le signe et l’opérateur du passage de la modalité constative de type empirique de la représentation – elle se présente représentant quelque chose – à sa modalité injonctive ou prescriptive de type juridique – elle a droit et autorité de se présenter représentant, elle se présente légitimement représentant.1 (Marin 1993: 21)

In the quoted text Louis Marin states that the picture frame is the sign and the operator turning an empirical representation into a legitimate

1 ‘The frame is the sign and the operator of the passage from a constative mode of an empiric type of representation – which is presenting itself representing something – to an injunctive or prescriptive mode of a juridical type of representation – which has the right and the authority to present itself representing, which is presenting itself legitimately representing.’ (My translation)

70 Vera Beyer

representation. Changing modes of framing thus supposedly imply differing forms of legitimization. In this essay I would like to trace changing framings and hence changing legitimizations in the history of an image, which might have a special need to legitimize itself, as it claims to be the true image – the ‘vera icon’ – of Christ’s face.

How was the task of framing the vera icon treated at different times? I will first analyse a 14th-century framework of a medieval im-age claiming to be a vera icon2 (Illustration 1). Then I will deal with a narrative reframing of the vera icon in the 15th century – more precise-ly in a miniature by Fouquet (Illustration 3). The third part focuses on how the vera icon is being (re)presented in counter-reformational art – as in the paintings of Zurbarán (Illustration 4). In the last section the question will be asked as to what possibly happened to the vera icon

after the Enlightenment – in particular in a series of prints by Goya (Illustration 7).

0. Générique – the Genoa Mandylion The Genoa Mandylion (Illustration 1), to cut a long legend short, is said to be an image produced by Christ pressing His face into a piece of linen, while an ambassador of King Abgar was trying in vain to make a portrait of Him. The ambassador then brought this piece of linen to his king to heal him. This image was supposedly guarded in Edessa (today: the Turkish city Urfa) until 944 and then transferred to Constantinople. So the Mandylion is said to be an archeiropoieton, an image produced without the intervention of human hands, without the – possibly falsifying – human mediation and it is thus ‘purely true’3. The Mandylion was said to copy itself onto whatever one laid onto it – which implies that it has the same capacities as the face of Christ

2 It claimed to be the imprint of Christ’s face, and I therefore categorize it as vera icon, though this name for this genre of images was invented later, and this image is referred to as ‘Mandylion’ or ‘Abgar-image’.

3 An image made without human intervention does not fall under the divine law that man should not make any image of God (see Geissmar 1992: 43).

How to Frame the Vera Icon? 71

himself (see Kessler 2004: 65)4. Thus, it is the history of its pro-duction which assigns and legitimizes the status of this image to be regarded as a true image, a vera icon.

Illustration 1: Genoa Mandylion, n. d., 28,2 x 38,4 cm, San Bartolo-meo degli Armeni, Genoa – without 18th-century reframing

In the Genoa Mandylion this narrative is not only a narration associ-ated with the image, told about it etc. – but this history is attached to the image in the form of its frame: it is represented in small reliefs in the frame of the image, which dates from the 14th century (see for

4 Bozzo Dufour describes the status of this image as a relic (see Bozzo Dufour 1998: 55-67).

72 Vera Beyer

example Wolf 2004a: 11-12)5. Ten images tell the legend of the im-age, its production, its effects, its copying and its transfer to Constan-tinople (Illustration 2)6.

Illustration 2: Genoa Mandylion, details of the frame

By thus representing the mode of production of the image it contains, the frame is the location of a meta-narrative, a self-reflection, a gé-

nérique: it presents the image as produced7. This, however, does not relativize its status but universalizes it, because the image is presented as having been produced without human intervention. The frame re-presents the legitimization of the adoration of the image8. This legiti-

5 Datings between about 1300 and 1370 are discussed, but not of relevance for my argument.

6 Concerning comparable narrative frames of codices, relics and icons cf. Dell’Acqua 2004. Concerning a precise analysis of the composition of this narrative cf. Wolf 2004a: 12-14.

7 The presentation of the générique, that is to say of the frame as the site of the enunciation of the production of images, and the question in which way it affects the status of the images it frames has been brilliantly analysed in the field of film studies by Alexander Böhnke. Cf. Böhnke 2004 and 2004a.

8 Wolf objects here, that the frame poses the problem that it has been done by hu-man hands and lacks the contact with the face of Christ. He thus regards the demon in the last image as a symbol of the frame as a human product (see Wolf 2004a: 15-16). I agree that a fundamental difference between the two categories of man-made and acheiropoetic images is being stressed here – especially as in the seventh scene already before the contact with the Mandylion a man-made image on the brick can be seen, but it is only through the contact with the Mandylion that it is turned holy (see Wolf 2004a: 16). But I see here less a contrast but a complementary relation: man-made images can provide narrative contexts for sacred objects, as narrative panels are


mizing framing makes this image credible. As Marin said, this frame presents the image as not only representing but legitimately represent-ing Christ’s face9.

Yet, the frame is not only telling us the story of an imprint on linen. At the same time the golden framework hides the linen, with the exception of the part of the surface where Christ’s face appears. The golden framework appears to be cut out along the contours of Christ’s hair and beard. Thus, in this frame, only the face and not its material context is to be seen. Instead of displaying the original material back-ground of the vera icon, the linen, it is concealed behind a precious and heavily ornate cover10. A profane material background has been covered by a golden surface, which in a medieval context represented the immateriality of a divine light11. Here one can see the attempt, usual up to today, to add value – one might well say: aura – to the de-picted by adding precious decoration12. (Though I should maybe point out that in medieval imagery there was not yet a distinction between spiritual and material values.) Hence, the frame of this vera icon in its

places behind the host on altars. Also the following examples in this text indicate a growing need for narrative contextualization and an approximation rather than an opposition between human and archeiopoetic image production.

9 This frame thus does not fulfil the modern presumptions of framing: neither can it be classified as a fictionalizing frame, it rather underlines the seriousness and the ‘reality’ of this image. Nor does it reduce the pragmatic function of the image but rather strengthens it.

10 Concerning this double function of narrative and decorative framing, cf. also Keßler 2004.

11 It is only in the 15th century that Leon Battista Alberti demands that the addition of valuable material be restricted to the frame. This will have two consequences: on the one hand the golden material will no longer be attributed to the depicted figure as it appears in this image, but to the image as such, that is to say: it is the image as an object instead of the represented object that is now framed by gold. On the other hand a distinction between an immaterial and a material value of an image emerges – while in the Middle Ages the golden ground represented the immateriality of a divine light.

12 Different times and countries integrated this image into their attributes of ‘aura’ – the last auratic reframing was the 1702 addition of the Italian baroque frame with jewellery. Concerning a complete revision of the history of the framings of this image see Wolf 2004.

74 Vera Beyer

narrative as well as in its material demonstrates that the image is to be regarded as divine.

1. Reframed – Veronica in Fouquet’s Heures d’Étienne Chevalier

Jean Fouquet’s illustration from the middle of the 15th century (Illus-

tration 3) shows the late-medieval western-European version of the story of the ‘holy face’ – which is the version still prominent today: the image was attributed to a woman with the significant name Veron-ica, who offered Christ a piece of linen to dry His sweat on His way to Golgotha. In the 15th century the creation of the vera icon was thus lo-cated in the context of the Passion. So the image and its mode of pro-duction stay the same, but its narrative contextualization changes. In the following, I would like to comment on the extent to which this contextual change is correlated to changes in the visual framework of the vera icon.

Fouquet’s image still presents the linen with the imprint to the spectator in a quite central position, it still integrates this image into an ornamental framework and still represents the history of the fab-rication of this image in the surrounding field. Yet, there are several changes: First, we see not only the imprint of Christ’s face but the whole piece of linen. Hence, the original material has pushed the ornamental framing further to the outside. Second, the linen is pres-ented by a woman. This figure also appears in the surrounding histori-cal setting and thereby re-locates the linen in the history of its produc-tion. It functions as a ‘quotation mark’ indicating the original setting out of which the image has been taken. Hence, the association be-tween the image and the story of its production becomes more visible. One can see not only the result, the imprint, but also parts of its story, the linen and Veronica, inside the framing. The historical context no longer appears as an external and detachable framework, as was the case in the frame of the Genoa Mandylion, but becomes in an insepa-


Illustration 3: Jean Fouquet, Carrying of the cross, ~ 150 x 120 mm, Heures d’Etienne Chevalier, ~ 1452-60, Musée de Chantilly

rable way visually associated with the ‘holy face’. The ties between image and narration thus get stronger. Victor Stoichita states: “Wenn im Falle des Abgarbildes die Entstehungsgeschichte Nebensache13

war, so ist sie nun wesentlich geworden.”14 (Stoichita 1991: 193) As a third change in comparison to the Genoa Mandylion, the proportions between the parts presenting the result and those narrating its history have been altered in Fouquet’s image: the narrative part takes over a large majority of the surface of Fouquet’s image. Besides, the space

13 I understand this in the very literal sense of ‘something besides the thing’.

14 ‘If in the case of the Abgar-image the history of its production was marginal, it now becomes intrinsic.’ (My translation)

76 Vera Beyer

becomes unified: the framing narration, which in the Genoa Mandy-lion appeared in ten images on the framing border, now moves into the framed picture and is depicted there in only one space (even though different phases of the narrative, e.g., Veronica offering the linen, Simon being forced to carry the cross, Judas committing suicide etc., are included). In addition, the image of the vera icon itself is pre-sented as an image on a panel, which is as such spatially integrated into the setting: it is placed on two ‘pillars’ of ground in the fore-ground of the painting.

Gerhard Wolf describes the consequences of this shift between the traditional vera icon and its post-medieval representation as follows:

Der fundamentale Unterschied ist, daß erstere selbst das Ablaßversprechen für die Ikone auf sich zieht, während bei letzterem das heilige Bild entweder nur begleitet wird, oder selbst als Zitat bzw. als Bild im Bild auftritt, ohne unmittelbar wirkungsmächtig zu werden.15 (Wolf 2002: 177)

The vera icon now appears in ‘quotation marks’. In this context it is crucial that Fouquet’s miniature was originally placed in a book. It was presented in the ‘framework’ of a prayer book: within a text and a sequence of images which tell the story of Christ’s life16. The specta-tor is here no longer confronted with the true image, but with a repre-sentation of a true image. The framework which legitimized the Mandylion now appears independent of the legitimized object, it le-gitimizes the true image in its absence. It is important to note that this reframing of the vera icon in a post-medieval logic of representation does not replace the ‘original’ – it continues to exist. In Fouquet’s case the image itself indicates the place of the ‘original’ vera icon: in the background one sees the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris, which was at that time one of the places claiming to preserve the vera icon. Thus,

15 ‘The fundamental difference is that the first in itself attracts the promise of indul-gence for the icon, while in the latter the holy image is only accompanied or appears as a quote or an image within an image, without immediately taking effect itself.’ (My translation)

16 It was only in the 18th century that one transformed the illustrations of this book into single tableaux by separating them and covering the texts with ornaments – and putting them into golden frames.


the presentation and the representation of the vera icon co-exist. (Also three nails of the cross, whose production is shown in the lower part of the générique-frame of this image, are presented as relics in that chapel.) So the reframed representations of the vera icon, such as Fouquet’s, which are today considered as ‘high art’ in opposition to the popular cult images, do not replace the cult images. They reflect the way images work and function as an additional legitimizing narra-tion. The development of the pictorial genre represented by Fouquet’s painting, can be regarded as a confirmation of the importance of a narrative contextualization which legitimizes the vera icon. This cor-responds to the fact that in the image so much space is given to a narrative framing.

2. Double Framed: Zurbarán’s Veil of Saint VeronicaThe coexistence of the ‘original’ and of representations of the vera

icon continues after the Reformation, notably in the realm of the Counter-Reformation. Stoichita pointed out that Zurbarán’s represen-tations of the vera icon (Illustration 4) coexist with – and refer to – the “Mandylion of Jaen”, which was very prominent in 17th-century Spain and whose formula strongly resembles the Genoa Mandylion. But it seems to me that the opposition I have set up so far between the presentation of the divine original – in a golden frame – and its mere representation – in a narrative context – cannot be maintained when it comes to baroque representation. I want to show how Zurbarán’s im-age plays with both modes. Therefore, Zurbarán’s veronica will be compared to the preceding ones.

Like Fouquet (Illustration 3), Zurbarán removes the ornamental framing of the Mandylion to expose the material background of the appearance of the ‘holy face’. He thus maintains Fouquet’s remainder of the générique of this image: the linen marks the image of Christ’s face as a ‘quote’ from the Veronica story. The ‘holy face’ cannot be seen without the context of its production. In comparison to the Genoa Mandylion, one can say that the narrative framework appeared there

78 Vera Beyer

as an additional supplement – while in Zurbarán’s image the framework of the linen appears to be undetachable from the imprint. The ‘holy face’ and its legitimizing mode of production – namely its générique-frame – become inseparably associated. So, if an aura is attributed to the depicted image, it is not by a golden framing but by a contextualization in the narrative of the vera icon which the linen performs.

Illustration 4: Francisco de Zurbarán, “The Veil of Saint Veronica”, n. d. (~ 1635), oil on linen, 70 x 51,5 cm, Stockholm, Nacional Mu-seum


However, Zurbarán’s painting – in contrast to Fouquet’s – does not show the narrative context of the production of this image – but only its result, the linen with the imprint. Moreover, the image is not locat-ed in the context of a book any more. It is an easel painting. Zurbarán takes the representation of the vera icon out of its illustrative

narrative context. And he re-presents the linen as if it was present: he depicts a ‘life-size’ linen in an illusionist, trompe-l’œil-like mode. Stoichita remarks: “Zurbaráns Interesse [bestand] offensichtlich nicht in der Bilderzählung, sondern in der Präsentation des Wunderbil-des.”17 (Stoichita 1991: 195) In its trompe-l’œil-like ‘presentation’ the touchable, three-dimensional plasticity of the linen seems to frame the imprint, which appears as a purely visual and apparently fading image in the centre. This three-dimensional framing corresponds to the way a moulded frame surrounds an easel painting. Moreover, it corresponds to the assemblage typical of the Mandylion (Illustration 1): on the one hand there is the material presence of an ornamental framing, and on the other hand there is the imprint of the Mandylion, a trace of something absent and always on the verge of disappearance – as the image is fading18. Thus, in Zurbarán’s case the linen seems to be what stays when the image fades; it grants a material presence to a fading visual image. This makes the white linen appear comparable to the ‘real presence’ of the host – representing Christ’s body after its visual disappearance. It is reported that the Jaen Mandylion was guarded with the sacrament in the tabernacle (see Stoichita 1991: 201-202). Hence, while in Fouquet’s image the linen served as a ‘quotation mark’ indicating re-presentation, Zurbarán’s linen grants the material

17 ‘Evidently, Zurbarán’s interest lay not in the narration but in the presentation of the miraculous image.’ (My translation)

18 Also in this regard Zurbarán combines two modes of images: the almost invisible imprint on the original and the appearance of a clearly visible ‘holy face’ in front of a linen background as depicted in the representative images of the Renaissance. Concerning the 16th- and 17th-century tendency to transform the true image into a ‘blanc’ which has to be completed in one's imagination, cf. Kruse 2002: 105-129 and Stoichita 1991.

80 Vera Beyer

presence of the image. Yet, still the replacement of the material pres-ence of the golden ornament by the spatial illusion of the trompe-

l’œil-like depiction of the linen remains a crucial indication of a trans-formation of presentation into representation. Further, Zurbarán evi-dently did not want to neglect this as he added a piece of paper with his signature to the – presumably last – of his veronicas (Illustration 5).

Illustration 5: Zurbarán, “The Veil of Saint Veronica”, 1658, oil on linen, 105 x 83 cm, Valladolid, Museo Nacional de Escultura, detail

So Zurbarán’s representation on the one hand approaches the visible presence of the ‘original’, but on the other hand still presents itself as a representation19. Zurbarán’s image seems to stand somewhere in between the presentation of the Mandylion and the representation of the vera icon in a narrative context. To quote Stoichita again: “Das Veronikabild ist während des Passionsablaufs entstanden, es ist sozu-sagen eine ‘Ikone’, die aber als ‘Auszug’ aus einer Erzählung zu ver-stehen ist.”20 (Stoichita 1991: 193) It may seem contradictory if an image does not clearly declare whether it wants to be seen as a pres-entation or as a representation. But I want to argue that Zurbarán’s

19 Stoichita mentions a print of Christ carrying the cross from Nadal’s Evangelicae Historiae Imagines, which is quite similar to Fouquet’s and which may have served Zurbarán as a model (see Stoichita 1991: 194).

20 ‘The veronica-image originates in the course of the passion, it is basically an ‘icon’, but one which has to be understood as a citation from a narration.’ (My trans-lation)


image actually demonstrates that there is very little difference between the two: between the ‘original’ and the painted linen, between the presentation and the representation of the vera icon. Zurbarán’s representation comes very close to ‘real presence’. Thereby it demon-strates what Louis Marin described as the baroque understanding of ‘re-presentation’, namely that representation and presentation are in-separable21. This propinquity between representation and presentation is supported by the way in which Zurbarán’s painting clearly estab-lishes a parallel between the depicted image and the painting: there is neither a spatial difference between the represented surface and the surface of the painting nor a material difference: Zurbarán paints, as it became usual in the 16th century, on linen. Thus, the media of the vera

icon and the painting, the depicted linen and the material linen of Zurbarán’s canvas, come so close to each other that they are indistin-guishable. So Zurbarán not only reconciles the traditions of the pre-sentation and the representation of the vera icon in the way he repre-sents it, but he also brings together the representation of the linen and the surface of the painting which is materially present. The surface of the painting corresponds to the vera icon and vice versa. The presenta-tion of the actual painting corresponds to what it represents.

If the present surface of the painting corresponds to the vera icon it represents, it seems to be justified that the painting is being framed in the same way in which the vera icon usually was: by a golden frame (Illustration 4). This corresponds to the following description by Louis Marin:

Tout se passe comme si le fond or de jadis s’était retracté sur le cadre; comme si la représentation l’avait refoulé à son bord. […] D’une fonction épiphanique du sacré à effet signifiant interne à l’œuvre peinte, effet posant la signification tran-scendante des saintes figures représentées, l’or passe à une fonction indicielle de la beauté propre de l’œuvre en tant qu’oeuvre d’art dont l’effet signifiant ne porte

21 Concerning this double logic of the baroque vera icon as positioned between representation and presentation and the frame as a mediator between these two levels of re-presentation, cf. Marin 1987/1997 und Marin 1988.

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plus sur ce que l’oeuvre révèle, mais sur la représentation même qui la constitue en tant que telle.22 (Marin 1984/1993: 19-20)

With the shift from a golden ground to a golden frame, what is framed in gold is no longer the represented content but the presenting surface of the painting. The fact that the golden framing is now attached to the linen surface of the painting rather than to the original sacred linen is possible as the painting’s presence became an equivalent of what it represents. Being framed as the Mandylion was, Zurbarán’s painting presents itself as a legitimate representation of the Mandylion.

Thus, Zurbarán’s painting combines the golden frame of the pres-entation of the Mandylion and the linen frame of Fouquet’s represen-tation in a double framing uniting presentation and representation. The ‘marginal’ difference between these two frames reveals a further parallel between ‘tableau’ and linen: the linen appears detached from the background. Correspondingly, the three-dimensional framing of the painting is the marker and the instrument that detaches the paint-ing from its fixation on the wall. Frames, as we know them, developed when painting became independent from a fixed architectural setting and became transportable.

3. Cuadrar: Goya’s TauromaquiaThe mobility which contributed to the emergence of the picture frame reflects a task which has also been assigned to representations of the vera icon: to transport the ‘holy image’ somewhere else. Indeed that is what the vera icon was made for: to take the image of Christ to a sick king, who lived far away and was unable to travel. So transportability was the dominant mission of the vera icon23 – before the Veronica 22 ‘It looks as if the once golden ground had withdrawn to the frame; as if represen-tation had displaced it to its border. […] From an epiphanic function of the holy which had a signifying effect that was intrinsic to the painted work, an effect which attributes transcendence to the figures represented, the gold passes to an indexical function of the beauty of the work as artwork of which the signifying effect no longer concerns what the work shows, but the representation as such.’ (My translation) Simi-lar thoughts are found in Braunfels 1950: 328 and Schöne 1954: 96.

23 Concerning the travelling of the Mandylion, cf. Wolf 2004a, especially 16-18.


legend stressed the aspect of surviving Christ’s death. For this mobili-sation of the image the printed image was a preferred medium – on the one hand because of the fidelity of its mode of production to the original, and on the other hand because paper is the lightest medium and therefore particularly suitable for the purposes of transport. (One can see in Dürer’s vera icon a demonstration of this mobility – Illustration 624.)

Illustration 6: Albrecht Dürer, “Vera Icon Held by an Angel”, 1516, engraving on iron, 186 x 136 mm

Maybe this mobility of the vera icon, which enables it to change its context – especially in the medium of the print –, makes it less sur-prising to discover the vera icon in the 19th century in a very different context: the bullfight. In 1796 a position of the torero presenting the – mobile – cloth to the bull before killing him is baptised veronica. This may seem an arbitrary choice. It does less so if one regards the paral-lels of the situation of the torero presenting the cloth to the bull before killing him to Veronica offering a linen to Christ – before he is killed.

24 Concerning the relation between the vera icon and print media as well as Dürer’s Veronica, cf. Wolf 2002: 317-324 as well as Geissmar 1992: 44-47.

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As a torero’s position in the bullfight, the veronica can be found in Francisco Goya’s Tauromaquia, which has strong relations to the Tauromaquia of Pepe Illo (1796) (see Gassier 1990: 57) – where the figure was given its name (see Cossio 1945: 932). Not only does Goya take up the motives of this book, he also depicts its author, Pepe Illo, a famous torero of that time, once ‘in action’ (sheet 29) and once at the moment of his death: being killed by a bull in the arena of Madrid (sheet 33 – Illustration 7). Significantly, directly beside the dying torero a second figure appears – holding the capa in the gesture of a veronica. It seems as if this figure has failed to divert the bull from killing the torero by offering him the linen. This raises the question: is the fact that the gesture of offering the textile to the bull becomes associated with the vera icon related to a change in the way true im-ages work in Goya’s imagery?

Illustration 7: Francisco Goya y Lucientes, “La desgraciada muerte de Pepe Illo en la Plaza de Madrid”, Tauromaquia, sheet 33, 1815-1816, etching, aquatinte, engraving, 245 x 350 mm


Goya’s take on the veronica obviously exceeds the previous de- and recontextualisation of the representations of the vera icon – as for example the recontextualization of the vera icon after its move to western Europe which Fouquet represents. What remains comparable is its status as a secondary representation, where a contextual framing comments on the way the ‘true image’ works. If this commentary plays on a metaphorical level, this may be characteristic of that time, as it may be characteristic of it to ‘quote’ certain fragments from a tradition to demonstrate the difference between modern models of picture and framing, and this tradition.

Illustration 8: Goya, “Los moros hacen orto capeo en plaza con su albornoz”, Tauromaquia, sheet 6, 1815-1816, etching, aquatinte, engraving, 245 x 350 mm

In the sixth image of the Tauromaquia (Illustration 8) it seems as if the bull leaves its imprint on the linen before it dies. The torero thus appears comparable to the printmaker who puts a paper on the printing form – before the ‘matrice’ is condemned to disappear. The fact that the figure taking the image and the figure destroying the original are

86 Vera Beyer

united in the figure of the torero corresponds to the figure of the printmaker. This clearly distinguishes Goya’s printmaker from Saint Veronica, who was never associated with the killing party.

The fact that the taking of an image is here causally related to killing is reflected in another term of bullfight vocabulary: cuadrar – ‘framing’ means, in the bullfight, to immobilise the bull before killing it (Illustration 9) (see also Careri 1986: 159). To ‘frame’ here means to fix a moving body – as the last step before immobilising it forever. Not a movement, but a still moment right before death is framed here. This is also what is framed in the single images of the Tauromaquia

by their wooden barriers. Goya frames the bull in wooden frames. While framing traditionally rather stated the survival of the image – in Goya’s work it becomes associated with the act of killing.

Illustration 9: Goya, “Pedro Romero natando á toro parado”, Tauro-maquia, sheet 30, 1815-1816, etching, aquatinte, engraving, 245 x 355 mm

However, Goya’s framing of the bull not only corresponds to the framings of the torero, the wooden framings of the prints also cor-


respond to the barrier of the arena: they are presented as parallels, both seem to be of wooden material and both mark the limit between the spectators and the space they regard. Thus, the frame defines the relation between viewer and image as comparable to the relation be-tween the spectators of a bullfight and the arena25. This emphasizes

Illustration 10: Louis-Auguste Bisson, Taureau, Aurillac, 1850, Da-guerreotypie, 17 x 21 cm with 19th-century blackened wooden frame, Paris, Collection Gérard Lévy. My reconstruction of Lévy’s framing in the exhibition Le daguerréotype français. Un objet photographique, Musée d’Orsay 2003

a strong delimitation for the sake of the protection of the viewer from what is happening inside the frame. If in comparison one once again looks at Fouquet’s presentation of the veronica (Illustration 3) in its générique-context one can see that in that case the Veronica is placed in a position corresponding to the viewer in front of the image, in brief: Veronica’s position is offered to the viewer. This identification of the viewer with the figure offering the linen appears unthinkable in Goya’s image: a strict separation between the image-taking ritual and the viewer is staged – image-taking has become a dangerous job. In addition, the task of its presentation is not to get it as close to the viewer as possible any more but to show it at a safe distance – secured

25 Gérard Lévy followed Goya’s model when he framed an early daguerreotype of a bull a with a 19th-century frame, which realises a wooden barrier plastically (Illustra-tion 10). Thanks to Gérard Lévy for the photograph of the frame.

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by a frame. To show something dangerous in a safe framework may have been the task of the Tauromaquia series in general: the Tauro-

maquia was done at the same time as Goya’s then unpublished series of prints on the Spanish war against Napoleon, the Desastres. The Tauromaquia has been understood as a framed version of the Desasters – framed as art (see Held 1980: 114).

Moreover, the barrier of the arena not only corresponds to the frames of the prints in its wooden material and its task to delimit the regarded field against the viewer, the depiction of the barrier of the arena in the form of a horizontal row of framed rectangles also looks like the series of prints presented in a row (Illustration 11). Inside one frame the boundary of the arena thus indicates that the series of lim-ited images continues in the horizontal; that we do not deal with a single fixed instant but with a series of instances. The limiting stripe reminds us today of a film stripe – and in my view this comes close to the way the framing of the Tauromaquia indicates the series to be re-garded: Goya’s frames do not isolate single images but place them in a series. Instead of the singularising framing concept of the long time dominant medium of the easel painting Goya exposes a serial framing. This corresponds to the multiplicity of the printed image and to the re-peating ritual of the bullfight. As what is framed is not a unique paint-ing but a moment in an ongoing row, it may not be surprising that the frames are not of ‘eternal’ gold anymore but rather provisional wood-en frames – unpolished, unadorned and lacklustre. This materiality – without any ornamental surplus value – lacks transcendental associa-tions. Repetition seems to have replaced transcendence – the repro-ducibility of the printing media has replaced material ontology. The legend provided both possibilities. But the models which were chosen to promise the continuity of the vera icon shifted from material conti-nuity to the continuing reproducibility.


Illustration 11: Goya, La Tauromaquia, sheets 30, 33, C, 1816 pub-lished, etching and aquatinte, sometimes engraving, 245-250 x 350-355 mm

This implies that it is not the final image which is of interest, but the process of its production. Accordingly, in the bullfight, veronica is not the name of an image but of a specific gesture in dealing with a textile. What the spectator wants to see is the process of framing – the result is not of interest. The shifting of interest from the image to its générique, which Stoichita described with reference to the beginning of modern times, finds its radicalisation in Goya’s images.

Thus, Goya’s reframing of the vera icon – after the French revolu-tion – confronts the viewer with a function of images, which is fun-damentally different from before: in Goya’s image framing becomes associated with killing rather than with surviving; the frame, rather than making the image tangible for the viewers, protects them from being touched by the figures in the image; and Goya’s frames do not isolate a single image but place it in a series – and if continuity is granted, then by reproduction rather than by material continuity.

In the end one might wonder what happened to the legitimacy and hence credibility which the frame was traditionally supposed to confer to the vera icon. One might notice that if the belief in an image plays a role in the bullfight, it is only to mislead the bull. The bull is presented as a brainless animal which seems to believe in something behind the coloured textile. Since the birds of Zeuxis trying to pick the grapes animals have traditionally been regarded as beings who let themselves be misled by trompe-l’œils – like Zurbarán’s. The bullfight thus might be understood as a demonstration of the power of images over those creatures who believe in painted textiles. The framework of Goya’s

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Tauromaquia exposes the true image as a means to mislead. Goya’s framing hence does not support the function of the veronica, as the framings of the vera icon traditionally did, but can be understood as a distanced commentary on its use26. Goya’s framing of the vera icon

does not legitimize its credibility – but marks its danger27.

References Böhnke, Alexander (2004). “The End”. Georg Stanitzek, Klaus Krei-

meier, eds. Paratexte in Literatur, Film, Fernsehen. Berlin: Akade-mia. 193-212.

— (2004a). Paratexte des Films: Verhandlungen des diegetischen Raumes. Siegen: Diss.

Bozzo Dufour, Colette (1998). “Il ‘Sacro Volto’ di Genova: Problemi e aggiornamenti”. Herbert L. Kessler, Gerhard Wolf, eds. The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation. Bologna: Nuova Alfa. 55-67.

Braunfels, Wolfgang (1950). “Nimbus und Goldgrund”. Münster 3: 321-334.

Careri, Giovanni (1986). “L’Écart du cadre”. Cahiers du Musée na-tional d’art moderne 17/18: 159-165.

Cossio, José Maria de (1945). “La Verónica”. José Maria de Cossio. Los toros: Tratato técnico e histórico. Vol. I. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. 931-935.

Dell’Acqua, Francesca (2004). “La legatura del Cod. Gr. I,53 della Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. Confronti tecnico-stilistici con la cornice paleologa del Mandylion e altri oggetti affini”. Wolf, ed. 175-188.

Gassier, Pierre (1990). Goya: Toros y toreros. Arles: Actes Sud. Geissmar, Christoph (1992). “Das wahre Bild: Modelle zur Simulation

Christi”. Ilsebill Fliedl, ed. Die Beredsamkeit des Leibes: Zur Körpersprache in der Kunst. Salzburg/Vienna: Residenz Verlag. 43-54.

26 Consequently Goya’s images do not claim to function as true images any more, they do not claim the authority any more to be legitimate representatives of the beliefs of their time – as the other images discussed in this paper did.

27 Thanks to Carolin Schönherr for her corrections.


Held, Jutta (1980). Francisco de Goya in Selbstzeugnissen und Bild-dokumenten. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt.

Keßler, Herbert L. (2004). “Le funzioni della cornice”. Wolf, ed. 61-67.

Kruse, Christiane (2002). “Vera Icon – oder die Leerstellen des Bil-des”. Hans Belting, Dietmar Kamper, Martin Schulz, eds. Quel Corps? Eine Frage der Repräsentation. Munich: Fink. 105-129.

Marin, Louis (1984/1993). “Du Cadre au Décor ou la question de l’ornement dans la peinture”. Rivista di Estetica 12: 16-35.

— (1987/1997). “Figurabilité du visuel: La véronique ou la question du portrait à Port-Royal”. Alain Cantillon et al., eds. Pascal et Port-Royal. Paris: PUF. 267-284.

— (1988). “Le Trompe-l’œil, un comble de la peinture”. Raymond Court et al., eds. L’Effet-trompe l’œil dans l’art et la psychoana-lyse. Paris: Dunod. 75-92.

Schöne, Wolfgang (1954). Über das Licht in der Malerei. Berlin: Gebrüder Mann.

Stoichita, Victor I. (1991). “Zurbaráns Veronika”. Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 54: 190-206.

Wolf, Gerhard (2002). Schleier und Spiegel: Traditionen des Chris-tusbildes und die Bilder der Renaissance. Munich: Fink.

—, ed. (2004). Mandylion: Intorno al Sacro Volto, da Bisanzio a Ge-nova (Exhibition catalogue, Genoa, Museo Diocesano 18. 4.-18. 7. 2004). Milan: Skira.

— (2004a). “Il Volto che viaggia: premessa a un incontro”. Wolf, ed. 7-24.


Framing, Actual and Virtual

The Crossing of St. Peter’s in Rome

Götz Pochat

The German term ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ began to be used frequently at the end of the nineteenth century, during the post-Wagnerian era as a characteristic of historicist overall installations and the striving for unity in the visual and applied arts. The phenomenon, however, was not new – Baroque architecture, sacred or secular, serves as an example in case. Hereby ‘framing’ plays an important role as a means of spatial organization and iconographical unification. Concepts are welded into visual forms, artistic expression and meaning emerge from constella-tions hitherto unseen and unknown, intimating a conceptual frame which cannot be separated from the materials used, the shapes and spatial relations within the physical framework of the architectural setting. Bernini’s baldachin in the cross-ing of St. Peter’s, the tabernacles in the adjacent giant piers, shaped in order to shelter and at the same time display the relics, and finally the cathedra in the apse are here considered with relation to framing as experienced by the visitor to the church.

During the pontificate of Paul V (1605-1621) the remnants of the old basilica of St. Peter’s were finally disposed of: a giant nave was added to the enormous central crossing, erected by Bramante and Michelangelo. The cupola was completed by Giacomo della Porta in 1590 (fig. 1; cf. Hibbard 1971; Magnuson 1986). An old ciborium in the centre of the crossing covered the high altar and the tomb under-neath, allegedly sheltering the bodies of both apostles, Peter and Paul (fig. 2). The barrier separating the presbytery from the nave was adorned with spiral columns which by tradition had been brought by Constantine to Rome from the temple of Salomon (fig. 3; cf. Lavin 1968: 3-9). A confessio, i.e., stairway, was installed by Maderno 1615-1617, leading down to the venerated tomb below the high altar (cf. Hibbard 1971: 72). A second altar was situated in the apse, serv-ing as a choir for the pope and the sacral college.

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The old basilica of St. Peter’s had increasingly been packed with relics and monuments, the most conspicuous of which were a relic of the true cross, the kerchief of St. Veronica, the lance of St. Longinus and the head of St. Andrew (cf. Lavin 1968: 22; 1980: 20). The late Gothic tabernacle of the holy lance was topped by a ciborium and a balcony from the 16th century (fig. 4), that of St. Andrew by a some-what later two-storied aedicula. The relic, the lance of Longinus, is at display in the frame of the ciborium, the conventional architectural form which has also been used to shelter the Eucharist, especially since the Counter Reformation. The access to the object is limited, the three-dimensional framing rather concealing than revealing the vener-ated object in question. As early as during the pontificate of Paul V the sacred area of the tomb and the vast cupola were indicated by a honorific baldachin, alluding to a processional baldachin on staves carried by angels, presumably designed and produced by Ferrabosco and the young Bernini himself (fig. 5).

After Urban VIII became pope in 1623, Bernini was entrusted with reorganising the whole interior of St. Peter’s. The provisional charac-ter of the baldachin did not meet the demands of a site representing the Centre of Christianity. The altar in the apse was disposed of. The task was carried out within a period of nine years, 1624-1633, con-centrating on the crossing and the hybrid structure of the baldachin covering the main altar and the site of the tomb, fusing the traditional form and function of ciborium, baldachin and canopy into one, on a monumental scale compatible with the adjacent piers and at the same time attaining a striking contrast between the light marble of the piers and the patinated dark bronze of the overwhelming baldachin, now erected for ever (fig. 6). The frame erected here transcends the ordi-nary shape. It must be experienced as a three-dimensional structure, transparent and open to the view from all angles, and, at the same time, striving upward, towards the dome, hovering at a considerable distance. The twisted columns correspond with the shape of the an-tique columns of the former high altar and the presbytery – their deco-

Framing, Actual and Virtual: The Crossing of St. Peter’s 95

ration of grape vines intended to be interpreted as a symbolic refer-ence to the sacrament. The bronze columns, however, are decorated with leaves of laurel – maybe an allusion to the poetic aspirations of Pope Urban VIII – a divine gift, bearing witness to the numinous presence of God. Four volutes unite the columns, leading the gaze towards the sphere and the cross at the apex, the cosmic triumph of Christianity (cf. Kauffmann 1970: 87). The canopy with its fictive lambrequins, adorned by the Barberini emblems, the sun and the bees, hangs over the holy site, stabilized by divine intervention of four angels (fig. 7). The emblematic character of the decoration – the laurels, the bees, the sun, and the cross – serves as an intramedial device with regard to the architecture in order to heighten its signi-ficance and, at the same time, refers to different iconological strata. From underneath viewers can recognize the dove, the Holy Ghost, hovering over the tomb of the apostles, related vertically with the representation of Christ on Judgment Day in the guilded cupola and God Father in the lantern (fig. 8; cf. Sedlmayr 1960: 23). The Trinity, thus, serves as an iconographic frame (or referent) with eschatological significance. Great care was taken to establish the correct proportion between the baldachin and the four giant piers of the crossing, as can be seen from a sketch by Borromini aiming at a formal relationship, which was soon endowed with an even deeper symbolic meaning (fig. 9; cf. Borromini Catalogue 312).

In 1628 the relic of the True Cross, brought to Rome by St. Helena, was transferred from the old basilica Sta. Croce in Gerusalemme to St. Peter’s. Four chapels below the piers of the crossing sheltered the relics: the ‘volto santo’ (the kerchief of Veronica) and the head of St. Andrew in those to the West, and the cross-relic and the lance of Longinus in those to the East (fig. 10). A new ranking of the site of the relics ensued as related to the longitudinal progression of the nave towards the apse, the triumphal completion of which was still to come. Consequently the relics, now related to the piers, were moved: the ‘volto santo’, manifest in the kerchief of Veronica in the south-

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western pier, the relic of the cross in the north-western, the lance in the north-eastern and the head of St. Andrew in the south-eastern pier (cf. Lavin 1968: 24-25; 1980: 21). The two-storey structure of the old tabernacles was transferred and transformed into each front of the piers, diagonally situated, facing the centre of the crossing. The lower arched niches serve as spatial frames of the colossal statues, repre-senting the saints related to the relics: St. Helena with the cross, con-templative and majestic (fig. 11); St. Veronica passionate, rushing forward with the kerchief ostentatiously at display – both women tak-ing part in the Passion, actually represented in the Holy Mass taking place at the high altar. The men, witnesses of the crucifixion and martyrs themselves, alluding to the ordeal with gestures and tools, look in awe at the cross and globe atop of the baldachin and also at the final victory and redemption as represented in the dome. The emphatic gesture of St. Longinus, enlightened by the vision, reaching out into real space, yet aloof transported by his ecstatic state of mind, is perhaps the most famous expression of religious fervour Bernini ever created (fig. 12). The colossal dynamic sculptures in the niches adhere more to real space and the reality of the beholder – in fact, they seem to liberate themselves from the architectural surrounding, transgress-ing the borders of the framing niches, striving for unification with the spiritual center of the crossing, as represented by the cross on the baldachin itself.

The upper niches in the piers are related to the active human fig-ures below, serving as a kind of double frame of the relics, the em-blematic character of which is counteracted by the brilliant display (fig. 13). Two of the original antique spiral columns, directly recalling the Christian tradition culminating in the exuberant shape of the bal-dachin, form part of the inner tabernacle with its slightly concave en-tablature and segmental pediment (fig. 14). The receding relief within this plastic frame, segregated from the outer niche, creates the impres-sion of an autonomous space. The relic is here on display, carried by angels and putti, a vision hovering in the air, surrounded by painted


clouds. The niche outside the tabernacle is incorporated into the real architecture and forms part of the actual crossing, populated by angels and vivified by floating clouds made of stucco. The viewer partakes in this drama of salvation: the holiness of the site, dominated by the dome, indicated by the baldachin, surrounded by the saints acting as prototypes of faith and sacrifice; the tabernacles, serving as frames of the relics, appeal to his imagination and aesthetic judgment; the origi-nal antique columns make the heredity of the church as real to him as the hidden relics referred to.

Already before the baldachin was realized and the nave completed, there had been no doubt that the final interior decoration had to cul-minate in the apse. The old basilica of St. Peter’s, founded by Con-stantine as the official ‘cappella ponteficis’, bore witness to the pri-macy of the Roman bishop and the legitimate claim of the Catholic Church – ‘tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam’. The alleged cathedra of St. Peter’s, stemming from the era of Charles the Bald (879 A.D.), was sheltered in a gilded throne made of wood (fig. 15; cf. Kauffmann 1970: 244-246; Magnuson 1986: 181). As early as in March 1657, Bernini made several drafts and clay-models (fig. 16), 1660 one 1:1 in situ, showing four bishops carrying the venerated chair: St. Ambrose and St. Augustine representing the Western Church, St. Athanasius and St. Chrysostomos the Eastern (fig. 17; cf. Brauer/Wittkower 1931: 74 a, b; Kauffmann 1970: 244-277). On the rear of the reliquary the apostolic command was repre-sented by the scene ‘pasce oves meas’. Great care was taken to attain the right proportion of the figures, the first cast was even rejected and an enlarged mould made (fig. 18). The correspondence between the baldachin and the cathedra arises from the analogy of material – the gilded dark bronze – and even more so by way of optical unification. A drawing in the Vatican, Chigi AI, 19 fol. 42 v, elucidates Bernini’s concern about this feature (fig. 19). The transparent structure of the baldachin serves as a frame for the image of the chair, pending in the air, surrounded by golden clouds and a host of angels intruding in the

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mundane realm from above (figs. 17, 20). The radiant light pouring in through the back window, with the dove of the Holy Ghost, serves as a dynamic confirmation of the Church and its sovereignty – a mani-festation of the ‘ecclesia triumphans’, the theatrical impact of which can still be experienced by every visitor to St. Peter’s. Framing now, in comparison to the earlier instants discussed above, has been con-verted to optical unification, related to the actual vision of the specta-tor. The effect, attained by the deliberate disposition of elements in space, is purely pictorial, dependent on the integrative force of per-ception and not on the actual plastic value of its components. The frame, in consequence, is the outcome of the dynamics of perception, a virtual construct emerging from the psychological pull of unifica-tion.

The unity of the crossing, the baldachin and its reflection in the piers with their monumental figures and relic tabernacles, related to the dome, constitute a vertical, paradigmatic framing in an iconologi-cal sense. This vertical is traversed horizontally by the vision of the cathedra, floating in mid-air, radiant and heavenly lit (fig. 21). The horizontal, syntagmatic progression from the nave to the crossing and the apse fuses the present with the origin of the Church. The constant intervention of the Divine is made visible in the apse, in combination with the dome hovering as a cruciform structure of a spiritual kind, the centre of which is positioned within the spatial framing of the bal-dachin, sheltering the high altar, the site of the Holy Mass, and the tomb of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul. The iconological implica-tion of the vertical and cruciform structure is rather of a conceptual kind; references are established by the spectator and become the out-come of reflection. We might refer to this structure as a conceptual frame, although this would apply to any reference of a more intellec-tual, spiritual kind.

Framing, as conceived and presented here, certainly shows more complexity than its ordinary use and occurence in the visual arts, especially with regard to painting. Defining the border of a picture,


e.g. the margin between the virtual space presented in a picture and the reality surrounding the beholder, has been a common feature in monumental fresco painting and mosaics since Antiquity. The fiction of a depicted frame creates a second level of virtuality, defining the borderline between pictorial space and reality. The frame of crucifixes was, for instance, normally such a ‘fiction’, but sometimes also real, in the sense that it was carved out of the wooden slab itself. Altarpieces, triptychs etc. are divided up and put at display in sumptuous plastic frames, reflecting architectural structures, sheltering and presenting the subjects depicted as objects of veneration. The invention of easel painting, which also represented profane subjects (portraits, mythologies, landscape, genre, still-life), was accompanied by simple moulded neutral frames, setting off the aesthetic sphere of art for its own sake from the context of everyday life.

The framing in fresco-painting in the 16th century very soon be-came a playground for experiments in the realm of fiction not only deceiving perception and expectation by virtual structures, but some-times even transgressing the border of the media themselves, as can be seen in Mannerist decoration systems, combining painting with (stucco) relief or sculpture. This intriguing development of framing, actual and virtual, culminates in the Baroque era with exuberant crea-tions of Gesamtkunstwerke, such as the crossing of St. Peter’s, a sym-biosis of architecture, sculpture and painting, a spatial experience where the borderline of reality and virtuality becomes obsolete and the very idea of framing, in the sense of defining and terminating, is converted into its opposite.

References

Brauer, Heinrich, Rudolf Wittkower (1931). Die Zeichnungen des Gianlorenzo Bernini. Berlin: Heinrich Keller.

Borromini Catalogue (2000). Borromini. Architekt im barocken Rom. Eds. Richard Bösel, Ch. Luitpold Frommel. Vienna/Milan: Electa.

Hibbard, Howard (1971). Carlo Maderno and Roman Architecture 1580-1630. London: Zwemmer.

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Kauffmann, Hans (1955). “Berninis Tabernakel”. Münchener Jahr-buch der bildenden Kunst 4: 222-242.

— (1970). Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini: Die figürlichen Kompositionen. Berlin: Gebr. Mann.

Lavin, Irving (1968). Bernini and the Crossing of St. Peter’s. New York: The College Art Association of America.

— (1980). Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts. I-II. New York, NY/London: The Pierpont Morgan Library/Oxford Univ. Press.

Magnuson, Torgil (1986). Rome in the Age of Bernini. Vol. 2: From the Election of Innocent X to the Death of Innocent XI. Stockholm/ New York, NY: Almqvist & Wiksell/Humanities Press. 181-191.

Sedlmayr, Hans (1960). “Der Bilderkreis von Neu St. Peter in Rom”. Epochen und Werke. Gesammelte Schriften zur Kunstgeschichte 2. Vienna/Munich: Herold. 7-44.


Fig. 1: Cupola of Saint Peter’s

Fig. 2: Ciborium in Old Saint Peter’s, Sebastiano Werro, 1581 (Université de Fribourg)

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Fig. 3: Constantinian presbytery of Old Saint Peter’s (reconstruction 1951)

Fig. 4: Tabernacle of St. Longinus, Old Saint Peter’s, 16th cent. (Grimaldi, Instrumenta autent. fol. 71 r)


Fig. 5: Girolamo Frezza, reconstruction of first baldachin by Ferra-bosco and Bernini

Fig. 6: Girolamo Frezza, reconstruction of baldachin project 1626 (after Bonnani)

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Fig. 7: Baldachin 1633

Fig. 8: Baldachin and cupola (programme of Trinity)


Fig. 9: Francesco Borromini, proportional drawing of pier and baldachin, Az. Rom 762, 1631, Vienna, Albertina

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Fig. 10: The crossing of Saint Peter’s (position of relics and re-presentations in piers), 1629 position in brackets, 1638 final position

Fig. 11: Andrea Bolgi, St. Helen with the Cross, 1635-1639


Fig. 12: Bernini, St. Longinus with the Lance, 1631-1638

Fig. 13: North-eastern pier with St. Longinus and the tabernacle of the Holy Lance

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Fig. 14: The tabernacle with the Holy Lance

Fig. 15: The cathedra from the age of Charles the Bald (879 A. D.)


Fig. 16: Bernini, Bozzetto for the cathedra, Detroit Institute of Art

Fig. 17: Bernini, Four Fathers, supporting the cathedra, 1657-1666

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Fig. 18: Bernini, Augustinus, supporting the cathedra, 1657-1666

Fig. 19: Bernini, sketch envisaging the proportion of baldachin and cathedra, c. 1657, Chigi A I, 19 fol. 42 v, Vatican Library


Fig. 20: Cathedra as seen through baldachin

Fig. 21: Baldachin and cathedra as seen from nave


Framing the Real

Frames and Processes of Framing

in René Magritte’s Œuvre

Patricia Allmer

René Magritte’s art works offer a sustained and detailed examination of the func-tions of frames and framing processes. His painterly analysis responds to asser-tions by traditional and modern artists and art theorists, and enquires into the ways in which conventional conceptions of the frame mask underlying issues of representation and its relations to a notional ‘reality’. This essay examines a range of Magritte’s (meta-)paintings in order to explore his contribution to the problem-atisation of framing, and makes reference to significant arguments in the fields of art theory and philosophy – notably those of Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger, Roland Barthes, Maurice Blanchot and Stéphane Mallarmé – to construct an un-derstanding of Magritte’s art works as intervening in an extended debate about the frame and its relations to representation. Particular scrutiny is given to the frame in relation to the parergon, questions of ideology, relations between visual and written codes, frames and figures of framing, and the frame as container or coffin for the thing represented.

The frame and systems of framing are a central focus and a repeated theme in René Magritte’s œuvre. This essay will explore the ways Magritte uses frames by seeking to understand them as deconstruc-tions of the conventional concept of the frame as boundary, border, a ‘system of detachment’ – in Magritte’s work the frame is no longer a discrete entity, but occupies a space in which ‘between-ness’ (a non-location, neither within the art work nor outside its borders) can un-fold itself. Through analyses of paintings such as Le Soir qui Tombe

(Evening Falls) (1964), La Condition Humaine (The Human

Condition) (1933) and La Reproduction Interdite (Not to be

Reproduced) (1937) I will trace Magritte’s obsessive employment of frames and figures of framing (windows, picture frames, mirrors). This employment raises questions that problematise the work of art

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and its relations to its environment, that explore ideology as a framework and its interventions between representation and being-in-representation, and which address the relations between painterly and written modes of signification. It will be argued that in Magritte’s art the relation between such conventional oppositions as inside/outside, picture/referent, image/reality, and writing/image is rendered deeply problematic, and the boundary itself is explored as something which binds things together rather than keeps them apart, creating a dialectical and sometimes unstable interdependency between inside and outside.

René Magritte’s paintings are frequently used as designs for book covers. In particular they adorn the covers of numerous books of con-temporary theories of narrative and representation, and the covers in question often show paintings by Magritte representing frames and systems of framing. John Berger’s Ways of Seeing shows Magritte’s La Clef des Songes (The Key of Dreams) (1930), which is compart-mentalised through frames; the cover chosen for the translation of Jacques Lacan’s Les Quatre Concepts Fondamentaux de la Psychana-

lyse (The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis), namely Magritte’s L’Idée Fixe (The Obsession) (1928), shows a painting which is subdivided, through painted frames, into four parts; the cover used for Christopher Norris’ The Deconstructive Turn shows Ma-gritte’s Le Soir qui Tombe, a painting which not only shows the sub-division of the painting by different framing processes, but also de-picts a window both escaping and remaining in its frame. Susana Onega’s and José Ángel García Landa’s Narratology bears Magritte’s La Condition Humaine on its cover, a picture obsessed with frames, as will be explored below. These paintings have been chosen to serve as images for book covers because of perceived connections between the dominant themes of framing and other painterly issues in Magritte’s meta-paintings, and the topics of the books, namely theorisations of narratology and representation. These connections will constitute a significant dimension of the discussion that follows, which will utilise

Framing the Real in René Magritte’s Œuvre 115

theorisations of framing and the image by philosophers and literary critics as well as by art theorists and historians.

The Frame

The word ‘frame’ refers, amongst other things, to ‘a loom’, a ‘ma-chine in which yarn or thread is woven into fabric by the crossing of threads’, and to a ‘web’. Is the frame a structure, perhaps a machine, in which criss-crossing narrative threads weave narratives? Is it to be understood as a structure that enables narrative to happen? Canvasses, windows and mirrors – conventional signifiers of reality, self and representation – enter into systems of framing in Magritte’s art, an art that analyses these objects of framing as well as their relations to each other. Magritte’s painting La Lunette d’Approche (The Field Glass)(1963) offers a meditation on the picture qua work in its frame, and the window qua work in its frame. Traditional Renaissance perspec-tive understands the structure of a painting, as well as its content, as analogous to a window looking out onto reality, as was famously ar-gued by Leon Battista Alberti in his treatise Della Pittura in 1435: “First of all about where I draw. I inscribe a quadrangle of right an-gles, as large as I wish, which is considered to be an open window through which I see what I want to paint” (Alberti 1966: 56). This perspective was arguably maintained even in the experimental period of High Modernism, as Jennifer Mundy argues in her essay “Surreal-ism and Painting: Describing the Imaginary” (1987): “within Surreal-ism the art object is but a window” (496), she asserts, leading to a beyond, to the world of dreams. Mundy elaborates further that the perspective on the art work as a window to some other reality was a “central premise” of André Breton’s philosophy of art, as he states in Le Surréalisme et la Peinture:

Il m’est impossible de considérer un tableau autrement que comme une fenêtre dont mon premier souci est de savoir sur quoi elle donne, autrement dit si, d’où je

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suis, ‘la vue est belle’, et je n’aime rien tant que ce qui sétend devant moi à perte de vue. (Breton 1928/2002: 13)1

Magritte’s paintings of windows seem to voice a criticism of this per-ception of painting. As Silvano Levy argues, Magritte subverts this notion of the painting being like a window by creating windows and views out of windows which do not adhere to representational codes and conventions as advocated by Alberti (see Levy 1997). In La Fe-

nêtre (The Window) (1924 or 1925) Magritte disrupts spatial composi-tion by rendering uncertain what is close and what is far away, what is inside and what is outside. His representations of windows repeatedly stress the impenetrability of that which is beyond the window, and deny the viewer the view out of the window.

A more obvious challenge to Breton’s assertion is offered by Ma-gritte’s La Lunette d’Approche, which replaces the transparency of the glass with the image of a ‘beautiful vista’ of sky and clouds, whilst the window, slightly ajar, opens onto blackness, nothingness. Magritte’s painting seems to reply ekphrastically to Breton’s statement, arguing that painting can never be like a window looking out on a beautiful view. Painting is instead already exposed to confinements and restrictions, not least by the frame, by the author’s frameworks of mind, and most importantly by representation. However, these con-finements and restrictions brought forth by framing processes do not reduce the art work, as Breton suggests, to a “record of perception”, to a passive object of mediation, but instead open it up, through framing it, to a “potential site of the generation of meaning” (Mundy 1987: 499).

In La Condition Humaine (Illustration 1), the positioning of the easel in front of the window is another instance where the view out of the window onto reality is disrupted and hindered by an object of representation, art. La Condition Humaine shares similarities with a 1 “It is impossible for me to envisage a picture as being other than a window, and […] my first concern is then to know what it looks out on, in other words, whether, from where I am standing, there is a ‘beautiful view’, and nothing appeals to me so much as a vista stretching away before me and out of sight.” (Breton 1972: 2)


Chinese box. Its mise en scène, or rather mise en cadre (see Wolf 1999) is marked by the theme of the frames within the frame: the wall of the room frames the window; the sill, curtains and curtain pole create another frame; the frame of the window is separated into an upper and a lower window, doubling the quantity of frames in the image; and finally, the frame of the easel frames the painting within the painting, and the landscape of the easel is framed by the landscape around it. This recursive accumulation of frames insists on the viewer’s inability to directly penetrate any notional reality in the painting, and on the viewer being always already at least one level removed from reality.

Illustration 1: René Magritte, “La Condition Humaine”

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However, in this movement, in this insistence on detachment, the frame also attaches, and in the case of the window it is that which brings together the most intimate, the inside of the house, with the external public life of the streets. The frame is a bar creating contra-dictory deictic dichotomies between inside and outside, between one and the other, reminiscent of Lacan’s description of the bar between Saussure’s signifier and signified – a bar causing slippage and incul-cating the mistaking of the signifier as signified, the inside as outside, the absent as present, and representation as reality. Perhaps mécon-

naissance, a stage in the Lacanian mirror stage in which the human being misunderstands the specular image as the ‘I’ (see Lacan 1966), is a similar kind of slippage between representation and thing repre-sented, triggered by the ambiguous nature of the frame (as the pub-lishers of The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis implic-itly asserted by selecting L’Idée Fixe for the cover of Lacan’s book).

The Parergon

In his discussion of framing in art, Jacques Derrida describes the par-

ergon, the ‘beyond the work’, as “un mixte de dehors et de dedans, mais un mixte qui n’est pas un mélange ou une demi-mesure, un de-hors qui est appelé au-dedans du dedans pour le constituer en dedans” (Derrida 1978: 74)2. J. Hillis Miller, in his essay “The Critic as Host”, explores the meaning of the word ‘para’ further:

A thing in ‘para’ […] is […] simultaneously on both sides of the boundary line between inside and out. It is also the boundary itself, the screen which is a perme-able membrane connecting inside and outside. It confuses them with one another, allowing the outside in, making the inside out, dividing them and joining them. It also forms an ambiguous transition between one and the other. (Bloom 1979: 219)

One of the clues and markers in La Condition Humaine for a canvas standing in for a ‘real’ landscape (in Lacanian terms, the symbolic standing in for the real) is a thin black and white dotted line, which

2 “[…] a hybrid of outside and inside, but a hybrid which is not a mixture or a half-measure, an outside which is called to the inside of the inside in order to constitute it as an inside” (Derrida 1987: 63).


marks the easel as different from the landscape. It constructs a frame for the frame within the frame, asserting the ‘you’ve been framed’ implied by the whole picture. This painting within the painting stands ‘simultaneously on both sides of the boundary’, the boundary being the edge of the canvas, ‘between inside and out’. The edge, the frame, joins and keeps apart, allowing, as Hillis Miller argues, the outside in and the inside out, and making the transition between inside and out-side ambiguous. This frame within a frame, against which both inside and outside of the representation are defined, holds the two sides to-gether, whilst keeping them apart. One definition of the frame, as we have seen, is a skeleton, a supporting framework. In what sense, and for what, is the frame a skeleton? It would be an exoskeleton, located on the outside of that which it frames, asking the question whether representation is the ‘supporting framework’ for reality or, on the contrary, asking which is framed – representation or reality?

The thin black and white dotted line can be compared to the Riss

described by Heidegger in his lecture Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes

(‘The Origin of the Work of Art’) (see Heidegger 1935/1936/1960). The Riss can be understood in two ways: it is the Aufriss, the breach-ing – that which separates one from the other, that which inserts a break, a cut through the flow of the image; and Riss is also an archi-tectonic word standing for Umriss as the contour, the frame, the sketch, and Grundriss as the plan. The dotted line in La Condition

Humaine seems to confirm these meanings. It destroys the illusion of a holistic view onto the landscape, it covers and fragments what Ma-gritte once described as the “reason for our existence” (qtd. Torczyner 1977: 260), namely the desire to look beyond – the viewer here is no longer able to see what is behind the canvas. The view is blocked, the desire to see ‘beyond’ is negated. At the same time this line seems to draw out a contour, a frame, a sketch or a plan for what is behind the canvas. This line interrogates the question of what has been framed – is it the painting within the painting, is it the outline of the canvas, or is it the boundary, the frame, the limit of the landscape and its repre-

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sentability? This line creates a joint, a hinge as on a door, which si-multaneously opens and closes – in Derridean terms, the brisure that carries connotations of breaking as much as joining. Furthermore, this image asserts that indeed there is nothing behind the painting in the painting; there is only a painting – a nothingness marked by the dotted line. Magritte’s paintings do not hide or conceal, as he himself states:

Behind the colours in the pictures is the canvas. Behind the canvas there is a wall, behind the wall there is…etc. Visible things always hide other visible things. But a visible image hides nothing. (Qtd. Whitfield 1992: 141)

There is no landscape behind the represented canvas, which is that which produces the longing, the very notion of and framework for a ‘holistic reality’ in the first place. The thin black-dotted line marks that which, by its act of ‘standing in’, creates that which it stands in for. The insertion of this line marks and creates the very possibility of inside/outside, of representation/reality.

In Le Soir qui Tombe (Illustration 2) a view out of a window onto a landscape is depicted. However, the window is shattered, the broken glass is lying on the floor of the interior of the room and resembles parts of the exterior landscape, reproducing the title by means of a pictorial metalepsis. Do we look, as in the Modernist tradition (for example, from Matisse to Rothko), through a window opening up onto something new, or do we only see what we have already seen? ‘Flatness’ marks the painting, a sense of absolute confinement, which is not only a confinement to the inside of the supposed room, but to a very narrow view of a bit of wall which frames the window frame, which frames the landscape. Again frames multiply in this painting (‘real’ frame, wall, curtains, floor/ceiling, lower and upper window and more). However, the environment, that which was meant to be outside of the painting, neutral to the painting, attains the character of a frame itself, exactly through the display of this ‘initial’ window frame. This seems to transform everything around it, outside of it, into a frame, and of course therefore, in turn, to frame everything – trans-forming everything around it, into a representation of itself, and fi-nally transforming the original detachment into an absolute attach-


ment. The frame here is no more a discrete entity but has become a ‘betweenness’, erasing clear distinctions between inside and outside.

Illustration 2: René Magritte, “ Le Soir qui Tombe”

The view out of the window is exposed as fake, through the window’s eternally reproducing the same view. We are still left with the glass, which has broken out of its frame, the frame of representation. This broken glass suggests an ‘escape’ from one frame – but the others are still there to catch it, re-frame it, recursively restating it as representa-tion of the representation of the landscape. The conceit of the painting rests in its representation of the broken window pieces in the interior, which faithfully resemble fragmentary images of the landscape, sug-gesting that there is no way out of representation, that representation is

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always already the representation of something already represented – the window will be broken, but the landscape cannot be penetrated.

Ideology

This inescapable frame marks the frame of ideology. ‘To frame’ also means ‘to shape, to make, to construct’. Magritte’s painting is compa-rable to Roland Barthes’ discussion of ideology in “Le Mythe, au-jourd’hui” (“Myth Today”). Barthes labels ideology as a ‘myth’, a “système double” (Barthes 1957: 208), a ‘double system’, which he compares with the experience of looking through a car window onto a landscape:

Je puis accommoder à volonté sur le paysage ou sur la vitre: tantôt je saisirai la présence de la vitre et la distance du paysage; tantôt au contraire la transparence de la vitre et la profondeur du paysage; mais le résultat de cette alternance sera constant: la vitre me sera à la fois présente et vide, le paysage me sera à la fois ir-réel et plein. De même dans le signifiant mythique: la forme y est vide mais présente, le sens y est absent et pourtant plein.3 (Barthes 1957: 209)

The glass of the window, and through this the landscape, in Barthes’ comparison, are framed by the frame of the car window. The breaking of the window of representation, through which some kind of access to reality might be achieved, is shown, in Le Soir qui Tombe, to be impossible.

There can be no breaking out of representation, which is the very playground of ideology, because another (the same?) representation is always encountered ‘behind’ the surface of representation. The ‘eter-nal return’ of the same representation, perhaps, expresses the Sisy-phusian structure of historical happenings – which turn and return without ever changing, pointing out that progress in history and hu-manity is a false notion, that humanity does not learn from history.

3 “I can at will focus on the scenery or on the window-pane. At one moment I grasp the presence of the glass and the distance of the landscape; at another, on the contrary, the transparency of the glass and the depth of the landscape; but the result of this alternation is constant: the glass is at once present and empty to me, and the landscape unreal and full. The same thing occurs in the mythical signifier: its form (object) is empty but present, its meaning absent but full.” (Barthes 1973: 123)


This idea was familiar to Magritte, as he comments in a letter to Gas-ton Puel in 1946: “J’ai fait une petite découverte qui permet de voir plus clair: IL N’Y A PAS DE PROGRES!”4 (Blavier 1979/2001: 203), and later on states in an interview with Georges D’Amphoux in 1958: “Le progrès est une idée saugrenue”5 (ibid.: 475).

Instead, as he suggests in a letter to Harry Torczyner in 1959:

People habitually proceed directly from gossip to History. We mustn’t flatter these habits if we want to make ‘things’ work in a less mechanical sense. If we begin an offensive, we must attack these habits by making known things that are habitually overlooked. – When I envisage a painting, it is de facto an offensive against these habits. (Qtd. Torczyner 1977: 259)

The key terms of this assertion are gossip, history, habits, ‘things’, and the declaration of an offensive on habit, and on things which are “habitually overlooked”. In many ways these terms delineate the core of Magritte’s concern with ideology and its workings. The question asked in La Condition Humaine of ‘what if the landscape would be destroyed, would there be another landscape?’ is replied here through suggesting that there is only one world, which cannot be penetrated directly but is always already presented through frames and frame-works. The ‘old world’ can never be left or exchanged for a new one, instead it has to be understood in all its ideological entirety and in its processes of naturalisation. In Le Soir qui Tombe Magritte launches his ‘attack’ on the false notion of progress, on the idealism of belief in a different world, and emphasises that as long as we do not analyse and understand the workings of ideology (how things are framed), we will always see the same image, regardless of how often we break the glass, how often we try to break out of the frame.

Breton’s assertion that painting is like a window, allowing a view on reality, is thus criticised in Magritte’s paintings as a misapprehen-sion. Le Promenoir des Amants (The Lovers’ Promenade) (1929-1930,

4 “I have made a little discovery which allows me to see more clearly: THERE IS NO PROGRESS!” (Translation mine)

5 “Progress is a corny idea.” (Translation mine)

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Illustration 3) explores the intermingling between a view out of the window and one onto a picture.

Illustration 3: René Magritte, “Le Promenoir des Amants”

Here Magritte replaces a mimetic representation of sky with two paintings in the painting (marked by their being framed), two framed fragments of sky looking like pictures hung up on a dark background. However, these two ‘pictures’ can just as easily represent windows showing the frame’s power to create ambiguity between window and painting, and still more importantly showing how the frame already implies the transforming of the thing framed into representation. Ma-gritte constructs here a claustrophobic space, referring, perhaps, to the prison-house (itself a space made up of frames and grids) of represen-tation. Magritte’s meta-paintings of windows and images always fore-


ground painting as representation, disallowing the possibility that windows can be simply transparent or mirrors simply reflective, caus-ing anti-mimetic foreclosure through inserting frames within frames. In other words: Magritte’s works insist on the impossibility of the art work’s reflecting some kind of reality outside of themselves; instead they are profoundly self-reflective, analysing again and again the pos-sibility of their own modes of representation.

Image and Language: Mallarmé and Poe

Magritte’s position is analogous to that of Stéphane Mallarmé, who, as Robert Greer Cohn states, reverses the traditional perspective by arguing that the window functions as a “crystallization of reality into art” (Cohn 1977: 23). Cohn argues that the window is, according to Mallarmé, a “complex, polysemic sign” (ibid.), incorporating all the ambiguities of the French word glace as verre (de fenêtre, de miroir

and as eau gelée) and bringing the dichotomies of transparency and reflection into play with each other. Reality becomes art or repre-sentation, once the ‘here’ and ‘there’, the ‘inside’ and ’outside’ are marked out, less so by the window than by its frame. The frame marks the difference from, and the deferral of, reality. It is a bar, creating spaces, creating breaks and splits. The frame is the sign of the creation of the other (perhaps this is why Lacan sees the initial division between me and you in the mirror stage) – less so because of the mir-ror, but more so because of the frame, which creates some kind of other space which is not mine any longer, which I cannot penetrate, which does not belong to my world and yet is in my world.

The frame, in its ambivalence, in its production of this strange other space, belongs to the site of the uncanny, the neither here nor there, the both/and. The frame is an added space-between, creating a betweenness which is truly the territory of ghosts, of the closely knit relations between heimlich and unheimlich, as Hélène Cixous com-ments: “It is the between that is tainted with strangeness” (Cixous 1976: 543). However, through mapping out space, creating another

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space, the frame creates distance between the thing framed and its surroundings. A similar distance is produced, argues Maurice Blan-chot, by language and its capacity to negate. According to Blanchot, “language only communicates the idea of something to us, because at the same time it negates the reality of the thing” (qtd. Haase/Large 2001: 31). Language, in Blanchot’s post-Mallarméan theories, is the

negation of all particular real things for the sake of the idea of these things. The frame in Magritte’s paintings creates a visual figure of this very space of negation. Magritte’s famous sentence, in his painting La

Trahison des Images (The Treachery of Images) (1928), “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (‘This is not a pipe’), transforms the view onto reality into a work of art, into representation, into an idea about reality.

Blanchot furthermore argues that the function of speech is both representative and destructive – causing its referents to vanish, ren-dering them as absent objects, even annihilating them (see Blanchot 1949/1995: 30). The imposition of the frame onto painting, mirror, and window, creates this absence, annihilates reality, replacing it with representation, as the painting La Reproduction Interdite suggests (Illustration 4).

This painting shows the back of a man, who stands in front of a mirror. The mirror’s frame distorts the boundaries between it being a mirror or another art work. However, the mirror does not reflect his front, but offers an ‘impossible’ reflection – it reflects what it cannot see, we see only what we already have been able to see, namely the man’s back. The only thing accurately reflected in La Reproduction

Interdite is a book and the various inscriptions on its cover. The book in question is Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nan-

tucket, which is shown in this painting in its French edition, a transla-tion in 1857 by Charles Baudelaire as Aventures d’Arthur Gordon

Pym. As the English title states, Poe’s book is a narrative; the frame corresponds to its meaning of being a structure for the weaving of narratives. Even more so, the frame here returns to what Michael Carter describes as an earlier form closely connected to the visual


representation of linear narrative, in which “the image consists of a number of horizontal bands which are often meant to represent the sequence of events within a narrative” (Carter 1993: 73). The frame as we understand it, Carter argues, “is a much later development and usually acts like a window frame” (ibid.).

Illustration 4: René Magritte, “La Reproduction Interdite”

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is on one level an adventure story, concerning a journey to Antarctica. However, it is also an alle-gory of narrative and framing processes, ranging from intratextual framings such as embedded narratives, to paratextual frames (see Quendler 2004), creating a treatise on the reading, deciphering and interpretation of textual signs. As Harold Beaver claims, “the whole narrative, in a sense, is hieroglyphic, coded in black and white, a

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dream-adventure in cipher”; or, as Jules Verne writes in “Le Sphinx des Glaces” (1897), “the frame of Pym’s Narrative seems deliberately confused” (qtd. Poe 1838/1982: 282).

One of the paratextual framings, namely the book cover, is already visible in Magritte’s painting, echoing the mirror’s frame. However, Poe’s text is also framed by a “Preface” and by a final “Note” (in the Penguin edition there are yet further paratexts such as additional “Notes”, a “Commentary”, or a brief exploration of “Antarctica Terra

Incognita” and an appendix about “Poe and Melville”). All of these paratextual elements emphasise and support another framework which is expressed through an insistent and detailed use of dates, places and measurements – all signs, framings, claiming scientific accuracy, yet being and asserting, like in La Condition Humaine, empty frames, frames framing (narrative) frames. The paratextual framings lead the reader deeper and deeper, like Magritte’s frames, into “narrow and intricate windings” (Poe 1838/1982: 27) of texts within texts. The extended, allegorical pun of the text, similar to that enacted in Ma-gritte’s paintings discussed here, relies on its multilayered texts – it is a fiction which pretends to be a fiction, while pretending to be a veri-fiable account of an adventure.

The whole novel is saturated with allusions to reading and inter-preting, beginning with charts and longitudes, and extending to for-eign languages, to chasms, and most importantly to ‘indentures’ found in the chasms’ walls, which are misread by Pym as a work of nature, rather than human inscription. While this obsession with deciphering and interpretation in Poe’s story can be traced back to the historical occurrence of the deciphering of the Rosetta stone, in 1822, sixteen years prior to Poe’s narrative, the significance of interpretation is particularly stressed through the abrupt ending of Pym’s narrative – he dies and the two or three final chapters of the story are lost. This abrupt ending is followed by a third voice, neither Poe nor Pym, pre-sented in the form of notes. Here voices frame voices and another ‘metavoice’ always seems possible. The notes redirect the reader’s


attention to the meanings of the chasms and the ‘indentures’ in the wall and with them to the structures of reality as a multilayered narra-tive, always already framed:

Mr Pym has given the figures of the chasms without comment, and speaks decid-edly of the indentures found at the extremity of the most easterly of these chasms as having but a fanciful resemblance to alphabetical characters, and, in short, as being positively not such. This assertion is made in a manner so simple, and sus-tained by a species of demonstrations so conclusive, viz. (the fitting of the projec-tions of the fragments found among the dust into the indentures upon the wall), that we are forced to believe the writer in earnest; and no reasonable reader should suppose otherwise. But as the facts in relation to all the figures are most singular (especially when taken in connection with statements made in the body of the narrative), it may be as well to say a word or two concerning them all – this, too, the more especially as the facts in question have, beyond doubt, escaped the attention of Mr Poe. (Poe 1838/1982: 241)

The passage points out that even conclusive demonstrations cannot guarantee the truth, redirecting the emphasis to a necessity of inter-pretation, reading and deciphering. The double bluff of this fiction, which is a ‘pretended pretended fiction’, attains its clearest meaning: Pym’s assertion cannot be trusted, as it turns out that the signs, despite all of Pym’s evidence, are made by human hand. This, however, is only one side of this bluff. Poe leads us further into the structures of narrative, since the latter assertion cannot be trusted either, because it is ‘only’ a narrative, a story. Poe seems to scrutinise here, in a similar manner to Magritte’s paintings, the very structure of reality as a multilayered text, which is made up of framings, signs and ciphers which can be interpreted; however, uncertainty remains the underlying force in the paintings and in the novel. This uncertainty is a closely-knit but widely spanning net of possible narratives or texts which embed other texts.

Like Magritte, Poe asserts that ‘reality’ and ‘facts’ cannot be trusted, at the same time ensuring that his own narratives cannot be trusted either, catapulting the reader/viewer into the field of unending uncertainty (perhaps the field of the frame), which, of course, pro-duces the most beautiful narratives and interpretations – the interpre-tations of the chasms’ shape reveals that their shapes and forms con-

130 Patricia Allmer

stitute an Ethiopian verbal root with the meaning “to be shady” (Poe 1838/1982: 241). In La Reproduction Interdite Magritte places a simi-lar meta-gesture in the image’s thematic core, as the only object accu-rately reflected by his mirror is Poe’s novel, suggesting that the only reflection which can truly be reproduced is a text and that every re-flection of that kind, in intellectual terms, is not a reality but a text. Magritte’s play with framings creates a structure that far from com-plying to its conventional role of creating clear boundaries, is used to interrogate them and to point out their problematic character. These arguments are repeatedly elaborated in paintings such as La Condition

Humaine and Le Soir qui Tombe, in which everything is already framed, asserting that there is no ‘outside of’ the frame, only eternal frames and framing processes always already transforming that which is real into representation.

On the Threshold of Liberty

The frame is centripetal and centrifugal, pulling together, enclosing, detaching and creating a self-contained space which at the same time folds back upon its surroundings, negating it and creating a world made up of frames, as is demonstrated in Au Seuil de la Liberté (On

the Threshold of Liberty) (1930, Illustration 5). Any pretensions to represent reality have vanished here. The paint-

ing shows a ‘three-dimensional’ scene, following in its theme two earlier paintings, Le Masque Vide (The Empty Mask) (1928) and Les

Six Éléments (The Six Elements) (1929). These two paintings show six framed compartments each of which contains a different image. Au

Seuil de la Liberté keeps these themes, but the compartments are now represented as forming three sides of a wall. The space of the wall is separated into a number of confined, framed images. A cannon faces the wall. A. M. Hammacher describes the different framed images as “a number of selected items from nature and man’s daily life” (Ham-macher 1995: 98). However, these images connote much more than Hammacher’s comment suggests. They appear to be a summary of


Magritte’s painterly pre-occupations. Everything in the painting con-notes Magritte’s œuvre: the female torso, the forest, fire, the sky with its defined clouds, the bells, the mundane house front of Belgian towns, the grained wood, a paper cut pattern and, of course, the com-partmentalisation through frames, are all intrinsic icons of Magritte’s artistic creation.

Illustration 5: René Magritte, “ Au Seuil de la Liberté”

However, on another level these compartmentalised images represent the artistic canon. Au Seuil de la Liberté refers to conventional and traditional nude painting, the conventions of landscape and archi-tectural painting and to automatic techniques of frottage and collage – forming a summary of significant aspects of art historical representa-tion. Even the frames of the compartments are not simply neutral or original, but point to a tradition of painting as employed by Diego Velázquez in Las Meniñas (1656), by David Teniers the Younger’s Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Gallery at Brussels (c. 1651), but

132 Patricia Allmer

also by modern artists such as Marcel Duchamp’s Boite-en-Valise

(Box in a Valise) (1936 – 1941) and Max Ernst’s Vox Angelica (1943). A stylised cannon faces this canon and even though it is a

can(n)on, it does not seem to threaten, to shoot. Magritte refers to this cannon as a canon bibital, a ‘private gun’, described by Laura Rosen-stock as symbolising “aggression and phallic power” (Rosenstock 1982: 120). The ‘private gun’ has to face up to the canons in painting. The image of a cannon sits still, facing but not confronting these codes of conventional representation. The cannon suggests no dynamics of explosion, but remains static, silent like the rest of the painting, a painting which, according to Sylvester, is marked by “silence and enigma” (Sylvester 1992: 56). The cannon does not seem to have the potentiality to fire. In French canon refers to both cannon and canon, so it might well be translated as ‘private cannon’ – the gun in this painting is both the weapon and that which has to be battled. The threshold (itself a system of attachment and detachment) of liberty, the way to liberty, a freedom, as Magritte seems to suggest, from con-ventional representation, tradition and history, seems to be barred. The cannon cannot break through this prisonhouse of representation, seemingly created by frames in the grid-like character of prison cells.

Frames and Coffins

However, these frames not only frame but also contain. Magritte states in an interview with Jean Neyens in 1965:

Le premier sentiment dont je me souvienne c’est quand j’étais dans un berceau, et la première chose que j’ai vue c’était une caisse près de mon berceau, c’est la première chose que j’ai vue, le monde s’est offert à moi sous l’apparence d’une caisse. (Blavier 1979/2001: 605)6

Magritte describes his first experience of the world as one dominated by containers such as the cradle or the case/chest – containers which

6 “The first feeling I can remember was that I lay in my cradle, and the first thing I saw was a case (chest) beside my cradle, the world showed itself to me in the form of a case.” (Translation mine)


contain and frame, constructing a world imbued with significant con-tainers. The association between case/chest as container and the cradle as container evokes, with a deadpan humour, the image of a coffin, which serves as the ‘final resting place’, a place of sleep like the cradle, but also as a box, a container for the corpse. Containers and boxes seem to be gathered together to reveal the opposition between life and death as artificial, showing how much the unheimlich is part of the heimlich, evoking a medieval saying, cited by Heidegger: “So-bald ein Mensch zum Leben kommt, sogleich ist er alt genug zu ster-ben” (Heidegger 1927/1993: 245)7.

Coffins and coffin-like containers appear often in Magritte’s art works. In Le Palais de Rideaux (The Palace of Curtains) (1935), wooden bodily shapes resemble coffins; Le Dormeur Téméraire (The

Reckless Sleeper) (1928) is not aware that the wooden box he seems peacefully asleep in could be his coffin; and in Le Parc du Vautour

(The Vulture’s Park) (1926) a tree, a painterly symbol, appears to be placed in a wooden box which also constitutes its frame, combining its state as living and as dead, but also combining relations between box, coffin and the picture frame. This link between boxes and coffins as frames, or frames as boxes or coffins, returns in In Memoriam Mack

Sennett (1936, Illustration 6). This painting is an earlier version of La Philosophie dans le

Boudoir (1948). Here, a ghostly nightgown with a pair of breasts is hung in a cupboard (reminiscent of Magritte’s first memory). Ghostli-ness is established in different dimensions. The absent female body is suggested by the conventional metonymy of breasts. The empty night-gown bears uncanny traces of the body which inhabited it, suggesting a blurring of the boundaries between inside and outside or container and contained, an obscuring of boundaries, similar to the blurring of the frame and the framed (as experienced in Le Soir qui Tombe).

7 “As soon as man comes to life, he is at once old enough to die.” (Heidegger 1973: 289)

134 Patricia Allmer

Illustration 6: René Magritte, “ In Memoriam Mack Sennett”

Perhaps most uncanny, disturbing and revealing in In Memoriam

Mack Sennett is the rendering visible of the union between cupboard and coffin, triggered by joining together, through the condensation of nightgown and human body, the cupboard as a place to put clothes after use and the coffin as a place to put the body after use. However, these alliances are extended further by one more object, namely the half-closed (or half-opened) wardrobe door. The door’s frame looks like an empty picture frame, echoing the frame which contains (or is contained by) the picture itself. All these different frames seem to conjure up a specific union between the animate and the inanimate, the dead and the living, in which picture frames, wardrobes and cof-fins all serve in different ways to incarcerate. This painting offers Magritte’s particular version of the Mallarméan assertion of represen-


tation’s destruction of the thing represented, as discussed with refer-ence to Blanchot above.

In La Lumière des Coïncidences (The Light of Coincidence) (1933, Illustration 7), the relation between frames and coffins is still more explicit. Magritte, through the clever interplay of light and shadow, creates a sense that a two dimensional torso has aspirations to become a three dimensional sculpture. Magritte shows that which would nor-mally be a two-dimensional painting of a nude torso in a frame, as a three-dimensional torso in a box, fostering the proximity between corpse and coffin and torso placed in a box, and the overlapping of associations between frame and painting and coffin and corpse. Ma-gritte here seems to have shed the ‘light of coincidence’ onto this ‘perverse’ relationship between frame and coffin, seems to have shown the all too close familiarities between cadre (frame) and ca-

davre, perhaps revealing what Blanchot referred to as “l’étrangeté de la resemblance cadavérique”8 (Blanchot 1955: 354) as also that of the image, since the corpse as well as the image is “ni le vivant en per-sonne, ni une réalité quelconque, ni le même que celui qui était en vie, ni un autre, ni autre chose”9 (Blanchot 1955: 348).

The frame is also a coffin for the work of art, its function analo-gous to the description offered by Rosalind Krauss, whose particular construction of the mode of operation of the frame of the art work implies

a way of entering the figure into the pictorial field and simultaneously negating it, since it is inside the space only as an image of its outside, its limits, its frame. The figure loses its logical status as that object in a continuous field which perception happens to pick out and thereby to frame; and the frame is no longer conceived as something like the boundary of the natural or empirical limits of the perceptual field. As figures of one another, outside and inside take on a deductive relation to each other, the figure of the frame turning the painting into a map of the logic of relations and the topology of self-containment. (Krauss 1994/1996: 16)

8 “The strangeness of the cadaver’s resemblance” (Blanchot 1982: 260).

9 “Not really the living person, nor is it any reality at all. It is neither the same as the person who was alive, nor is it another person, nor is it anything else.” (Blanchot 1982: 256)

136 Patricia Allmer

Illustration 7: René Magritte, “ La Lumière des Coïncidences”

In Magritte’s art, processes of framing seem not only to suggest a world in which everything is already framed, and therefore removed from any notional reality and displaced instead into the realm of the ideological, the illusion of Barthesian myth. At the same time, they also shed light onto the ‘perverse’, disturbing relationship between frame and coffin; both attempt to limit the unlimited and contain the uncontainable, namely death and representation. Representation is offered up by Magritte’s eminently meta-pictorial œuvre as a kind of death, the disappearance of things into his images of them, a process which French theorists from Mallarmé to Blanchot have analysed. His paintings insist on understanding the frame as the border that contains and excludes in contradictory, deeply problematic ways, and offer a sustained analysis of how the image relies upon the frame for its own effectiveness.


References

Alberti, Leon Battista (1966). On Painting. Transl. John Spencer. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.

Barthes, Roland (1957). Mythologies. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. — (1973). Mythologies. Transl. Annette Lavers. St. Albans: Paladin. Berger, John (1972/1974). Ways of Seeing. London: BBC/Harmonds-

worth: Penguin. Blanchot, Maurice (1955). L’Espace Littéraire. Paris: Gallimard. — (1982). The Space of Literature. Transl. Ann Smock. London:

Univ. of Nebraska Press. — (1949/1995). The Work of Fire. Transl. Charlotte Mandell. Stan-

ford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press. Blavier, André, ed. (1979/2001). René Magritte: Écrits Complets.

Paris: Flammarion. Bloom, Harold et al., eds. (1979). Deconstruction & Criticism. Lon-

don: Routledge. Breton, André (1928/2002). Le Surréalisme et la Peinture. Paris: Gal-

limard. — (1972). Surrealism and Painting. London: Macdonald. Carter, Michael (1993). Framing Art: Introducing Theory and the

Visual Image. Sydney: Hale & Iremonger. Cixous, Hélène (1976). “Fiction and Its Phantoms: A Reading of

Freud’s Das Unheimliche (The ‘Uncanny’)”. New Literary History7/3: 525-548.

Cohn, Robert Greer (1977). “Mallarmé’s Windows”. Yale French Studies 54: 22-31.

Derrida, Jacques (1978). La Vérité en Peinture. Paris: Flammarion. — (1987). The Truth in Painting. Transl. Geoffrey Bennington, Ian

McLeod. London: Univ. of Chicago Press. Haase, Ullrich, William Large (2001). Maurice Blanchot. Critical

Thinkers. London: Routledge. Hammacher, A. M. (1995). Magritte. New York, NY: Abradale Press. Heidegger, Martin (1927/1993). Sein und Zeit (17th ed.). Tübingen:

Niemeyer. — (1935/1936/1960). Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes. Stuttgart:

Reclam. — (1973). Being and Time. Transl. John Macquarrie, Edward Robin-

son. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

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Krauss, Rosalind E. (1994/1996). The Optical Unconscious. London: MIT Press.

Lacan, Jacques (1966). “Le Stade du Miroir comme Formateur de la Fonction du Je telle qu’elle Nous est Révélée dans L’Expérience Psychanalytique” [1949]. Jacques Lacan. Écrits. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. 93-100.

— (1964/1973). Les Quatre Concepts Fondamentaux de la Psychana-lyse. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

— (1979). The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Transl. Alan Sheridan. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Levy, Silvano (1997). “René Magritte: Representational Iconoclasm”. Silvano Levy, ed. Surrealism: Surrealist Visuality. New York, NY: New York Univ. Press. 15-30.

Mundy, Jennifer (1987). “Surrealism and Painting: Describing the Imaginary”. Art History 10/4: 492-508.

Norris, Christopher (1983). The Deconstructive Turn: Essays in the Rhetoric of Philosophy. London: Methuen.

Onega, Susan, José Ángel García Landa (1996). Narratology: An Introduction. London: Longman.

Poe, Edgar Alan (1838/1982). The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Quendler, Christian (2004). “Veil, Curtain, Picture, and Screen: A Reading of Initial Framings in Nineteenth-Century American Fic-tion”. Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 29/2: 217-237.

Rosenstock, Laura (1982). “De Chirico’s Influence on the Surreal-ists”. William Rubin, ed. De Chirico. London: The Tate Gallery. 111-130.

Sylvester, David (1992). Magritte. London: Thames & Hudson. Torczyner, Harry (1977). Magritte: Ideas and Images. New York,

NY: Harry N. Abrams. Whitfield, Sarah (1992). Magritte. London: South Bank Centre. Wolf, Werner (1999). “Framing Fiction: Reflections on a Narra-

tological Concept and an Example: Bradbury, Mensonge”. Walter Grünzweig, Andreas Solbach, eds. Grenzüberschreitungen: Narra-tologie im Kontext/Transcending Boundaries: Narratology in Con-text. Tübingen: Narr. 97-124.

Touching Upon Framing

Medial Conditions of Printmaking in Dieter Roth’s

Komposition I-V (1977-1992)

Daniel F. Herrmann

The artistic work of Dieter Roth (1930-1998) has continually challenged bounda-ries and borders of the conventions and traditions of visual art. The transgression of such borders can be described as a leitmotiv in Roth’s artistic opus. This article examines a variation of this theme in a series of sixteen consecutive etchings, printed between 1975 and 1992. Within the seemingly arbitrary composition of this series, a strong reference towards such topics as artistic production, artistic authorship and the conditions of printmaking itself can be discerned. The means of such reference are represented by Roth’s artistic use of qualities specific to the medium of intaglio: the process of imprinting a plate into the material of the pa-per, leaving an inherent trace of its medial prerequisite – the plate mark, an in-dented frame. Whereas such a frame in printmaking is traditionally regarded as the borderline of the work, Roth’s transgressive approach begins right at this point. By incorporating the pictorial space outside the impression into his works, Roth cannot only be recognized as using the concept of framing as the crucial signifier in his series, he also touches upon questions of the discourse of authority and the medial conditions of printmaking itself.

In his seminal 1981 exhibition catalogue Westkunst, Laszlo Glozer establishes the dialectical notions of “Ausstieg aus dem Bild – Wieder-

kehr der Aussenwelt”1 as central concepts for post-abstractionist painting (cf. Glozer 1981: 234-238). For Glozer, it is not the return of figurative representation – soupcans, comicstrips, pin-up girls – which constituted the novelty of the art of the 1960s, but the laying bare of the artistic medium as such. Instead, the incorporation of physical signifiers from outside the traditional concept of painting constituted the scandalous break with previously established conventions of art. Glozer’s ‘exit’ can thus essentially be described as a ‘breaking of

1 ‘Exit from the picture – return of the outside world’ (Glozer 1981: 234).

140 Daniel F. Herrmann

frame’ for the medium of painting. While the frames and framings of paintings – both literal and conceptual – have been the subjects of considerable academic interest2, the particular workings of the specific medium as contextual framing in other visual arts have yet to be considered.

For the medium of intaglio, no such consideration exists to date3. While it will be possible to find literature relating the changes brought about by the technical advancements of the novel processes of screen-printing or photolithography to the art of the 1960s4, Glozer’s ‘exit from the picture’ has never been put into the context of such a traditional medium5. Yet, as regards examining physical framings, intaglio seems to be quite a worthwhile subject. Each intaglio print comes with a whole set of frames. Intaglio printing is the process of imprinting an engraved, incised or etched metal plate into paper. During this printing process, printer’s ink is transferred from the cut grooves onto the paper, thus constituting the visible image. Each print, however, also comes with an impression. As the plate is pressed onto the paper with considerable pressure, the image so pulled is always somewhat indented. This becomes clearest at the plate mark, the embossed border of the printed plate. Here, one can make out a distinct, haptic difference between the printed image and the paper it was printed on. The medial frame of intaglio hence inevitably comes

2 Cf. Derrida 1978/1987, Mendgen, ed. 1995, Duro, ed. 1996. Also see, for example, Richard Phelan’s contribution to this volume.

3 Two analyses come close to assessing this phenomenon: Huber 1998 and Rebel 2003. While no author solely addresses examples from intaglio, both authors provide a much-needed fresh view of printmaking’s medial aspects. Huber presents an ap-proach drawing on systems theory, while Rebel incorporates medial aspects into a traditional historical point of view. The present paper owes much to Huber’s thesis of a medium’s specific “emer-gence of flaws, technical problems and medial interferences” as its constituting char-acteristics (Huber 1998: 26).

4 See especially Tallman 1996.

5 Of the 863 artworks listed in Westkunst, only a minute number are prints. None of them are intaglio prints. Cf. Glozer 1981.

Framing in Dieter Roth’s Komposition I-V 141

with a physical framing, the platemark being its physical ‘key’ (see Goffman 1974: 43-44). This key, however, does not stand alone, as the trace of the physical boundary of the plate is paralleled by the physical boundary of its carrier: the paper, whose edge constitutes the key of yet another actual, physical framing. Nonetheless, these physi-cal borders and boundaries can be tied to a conventional, or social, framing. Up to the 1960s the ontological concept of the artwork in printmaking has been one that identifies the border of the plate’s im-pression with the border of the artwork as such. The margin between the two borders, the two frames, was a quantitée negligeable and of no importance to the artwork itself. Consequently, most single-leaf woodcuts can be found to be considerably cropped; intaglio prints by Dürer, Rembrandt, Nanteuil, woodcuts from the 1920s can be found cut and cropped right to the edge of plate’s facette6. With the plate-mark framing the artistic space within its confinements, the surround-ing margin was of interest only to auction houses and the likes as a means of determining an impression’s rarity and comparative market value7.

I would like to suggest a different approach to such borders of in-taglio printing. In accordance with the changed notion of painting in the 1960s, these traces of conditions of printmaking can be regarded as “concrete, physical markers of the specific frame”8 of intaglio printmaking. While disagreeing with Goffman’s dichotomy of “natu-ral” and “social” primary frameworks (Goffman 1974: 22), I would still like to point out how the medial conditions of intaglio printmak-ing can be addressed in terms of their physical qualities as well as in

6 The paper conservator Max Schweidler still reports the cropping of prints as a common practice in the late 1930s (see Schweidler 1938: 5).

7 Artistic interventions outside the platemark have consequently been regarded as Randeinfälle, ‘marginal ideas’. As such, they are perceived as welcome marks of rarity and authenticity, but mere Parerga in relation to the artwork; cf. Jacobs 1974. Whereas Jacobs provides an extensive iconographic survey of motives, the ontologi-cal implications for the artwork, which this phenomenon presents, are not regarded.

8 See the “Introduction” to this volume.


terms of the traditional and conventional aspects of these qualities. This is certainly the case with a series of sixteen intaglio prints, pro-gressively executed from 1977 to 1992 by the artist Dieter Roth. In introducing this series and analysing parts of it in greater detail, I would like to call attention to Roth’s awareness of the questions of initial framings in terms of medial prerequisites and his modulations of such medial conditions.

The work of the Swiss artist Dieter Roth has only recently gained the institutional exposure that does justice to the impact it had on other artists9. Roth can be said to be one of the most prolific and innovative artists of his generation, with collaborators such as Richard Hamilton or Arnulf Rainer, a scope of work ranging from writing to sculpture, performance and painting, and materials used ranging from traditional pigments to chocolate, spices and mold. In relation to printmaking, the influential role of Dieter Roth is only recently receiving increased attention10. Trained as a commercial artist in Switzerland in the early 1950s, Roth was a qualified craftsman, skilled in photo-reproductive techniques as well as in more traditional printmaking methods. Whereas American printmaking often broke the boundaries of modernism by means of previously unconventional processes – screen-printing, photolithography – Roth’s reaction to Switzerland’s rigid embrace of modernism was a different one. Roth can be shown to have been very much aware of the medial conditions as well as of the conventions of traditional printmaking. Especially in looking at his use of intaglio printmaking, he can also be shown to use these very conventions as a means of questioning the medium, transgressing and expanding it.

9 See Roth Time (2004), Documenta 11: Plattform 5: Ausstellung (2002).

10 Cf. the recently issued volumes of Dieter Roth’s Catalogues Raisonné: Dobke, ed. 2003a, Dobke, ed. 2003b and Dobke, ed. 2004.


In 1992, the Hamburg Griffelkunst Editions11 presented their sub-scribers with a print by Dieter Roth. Neither abstract nor figural, it consisted of a black rectangular field, an intaglio impression on suave, well-made paper (see Illustration 1). This impression has a distinct

Illustration 1: Dieter Roth: untitled, 1992; combination-print © Dieter Roth Estate, Basel; Photo: Author

11 For a history of the Griffelkunst Edition and its commissioning practice, see Junge 1989: 131-256.


quality to it: filigree lines criss-cross in every direction, covering an area made up from different hues of grey. A dense network of inter-secting lines and streaks, of delicate scribbles and strong imprinted incisions is thus embedded in a field of oscillating tones and tints of blackness. Smoothly changing from dark patches to lighter areas, it softens down the lines’ harsh contrasts and gives the print a feeling of considerable depth, albeit without distinct structure. When closely examined, circular lines can be seen to radiate from the centre of the area, touching on the borders of the plate. Rough streaks intersect the network of lines and scribbles, fathoming into the imprinted rect-angles’ corners to form a diagonal cross. These circles and intersecting cross-lines are the only coherent shapes to be made out, yet they can hardly be called figural elements. No tangible motif can be made out in this print.

Outside the borders of the imprinted rectangular form, we can, however, discern something more tangible. On the top, the bottom, to the left and to the right of the impression, smudgy fingerprints are visible, each reaching a couple of centimetres into the margin, right between the border of the plate impression and the border of the paper. In this margin, this whitespace, between the two physical fram-ings as well as between the ink of the plate and those of the fingers, a signature can be made out: “Dieter Roth 1977/’92”.

In the Griffelkunst’s Catalogue Raisonné the print is accurately listed as a “combination print” (Rüggeberg, ed. 2004: 210). Indeed, the black rectangle with its scarred and scratched surface is the result of the combined printing of five individual plates, one on top of the other. Hence the dark tonality of the impression and the dissolving of coherent forms into an intricate mass of etched, scratched and incised lines. The signature – “Dieter Roth 1977/’92” – ties the print not to a specific point in time but rather to a period. And, as a matter of fact, the print is the result of a 15-year process. For the five single plates which were printed in combination to produce the impression shown had each been individually printed before and had undergone two


consecutive modifications. The respective previous impressions thus acquire a sequential status within a series of work that finds its convergence and end in the act of printing all the plates in combination.

Illustration 2: Overview of print suite „Komposition I – IV“ Top Row: „Komposition I – IV“, 1977 Middle Row: „Komposition I – IV“, 1979 Bottom Row: „Komposition I – IV“, 1991


An examination of the series of fifteen prints, which finally led to the combination print in question, allows the distinct stages of production

to be followed (see Illustration 2). The dark combination print of 1992 is the result of the combined printing of plates from a previous intaglio series, consisting of five prints, each of which had been subsequently reworked twice before. The first series was completed in 1977. Two years later, in 1979, a new series followed, consisting of impressions from the very same, yet reworked plates. In 1991, a third series was produced, once again making use of the same plates, once again reworked.

As the print “Komposition V” from 1977 (see Illustration 3) exemplifies, the prints of the 1977 series all follow similar principles of composition: radial lines emphasise the centre of the impression, intersected by arbitrary patterns and ornamental designs. Hence, where applied, crosshatching is not used to create figural volumes, but is used to fill areas resulting from the overlapping of lines. On some of the plates, Roth has worked in drypoint. The majority of lines, however, are the result of traditional etching. The prints are signed with a pseudonym: “Heinrich Schwarz”.

“Heinrich Schwarz” is also used as a signature for the second set of prints (see Illustration 4). Here, in 1979, Dieter Roth is using the very same plates from the previous edition. While drypoint is very delicately used in the previous series, here it is exactly this very reworking of the plates by means of mechanical gauging and scratching instead of a chemically induced biting process that is the main mode of artistic expression. Deep scrapes and cuts cover the sur-faces, their metal burr catching lots of ink and leaving unmistakable traces. Only two impressions differ from this: in them, Roth makes elaborate use of aquatint instead of drypoint. Aquatint, as one of the most tonal of intaglio processes, has in this case one thing in common with drypoint: it serves as a definite distinction to the previous impres-sions. Roth is establishing a sequence which marks its progression by medial means. While the 1977 impressions share the common medial


quality of bite-process line etching, this next layer of the sequence, the reworked series of 1979, is defined by distinct medial differentiation: drypoint and tonal etching.

Illustration 3: Dieter Roth: “Komposition V”, 1977; etching, drypoint © Dieter Roth Estate, Basel; Photo: Author


Illustration 4: Dieter Roth: “Komposition V”, 1979; etching, drypoint © Dieter Roth Estate, Basel; Photo: Author

Twelve years later, in 1991, the next layer of the established sequence is added. Once again, the plates are reworked and, once again, Roth makes abundant use of drypoint. However, this time, figural elements are used as distinctive features: silly piglets’ faces, cats, dogs, the backside of a fat naked man. All these figural elements can be connected to other examples of Roth’s personal iconography. Yet, this


would hardly serve any worthwhile purpose. Mainly, Roth is using the figural elements as yet another marker of the printmaking tradition: that of the reworking of artistic output. In this way, he reduces the denotative quality of the figurative drawing to its medial quality and, in effect, its self-reference. The figurative elements become yet another signifier for the medial process.

No print in the entire series exemplifies this better than “Komposi-tion V” (see Illustration 5) of 1991. Here, the previously twice re-worked plate has been marked with deep scrapes: a diagonal cross, which we can still make out in the later combination print. The gaug-ing of such a cross into a plate, however, traditionally signifies its ‘cancelling’, indicating the destruction of the plate in order to prevent it from being printed again. Yet, this very mark is deliberately imple-mented by Roth and presented to the beholder at the end of a previ-ously established sequence. Consequently, Roth does not so much cancel a plate than far more so a traditional convention of printmak-ing, thus ‘breaking the frame’ of the medium’s initial social framing.

Roth has worked in an iterative sequence. While each part of this sequence differs from the previous one, the common denominator of these iterations is its medium: ‘intaglio printing’ as explicit framing is the very theme to be played in different variations. While these varia-tions are rather moderate in the 1979 series, the series from 1991 and the final combination print of 1992 go one step further. They ‘break frame’ by questioning both physically and conventionally established borders of the medium itself: on each and every single print, Roth makes use of the margin around the plate impression by leaving distinct, black fingerprints.

The deliberate use of fingerprints is not uncommon in fine art printmaking after the 1960s. The fingerprint can be said to have be-come an iconic signifier of the artistic process as well as of artistic identity and authenticity. In 1965 Bruce Conner, feeling restricted in his artistic freedom by the rules of the printing press that had invited


Illustration 5: Dieter Roth: “Komposition V”, 1991; etching, dry-point, aquatint

© Dieter Roth Estate, Basel; Photo: Author


him to collaborate, had the largest available lithographic stone prepared for him, only to leave one single fingerprint on it (see Illus-

tration 6). It served as a sarcastic retort at the presumably ‘painterly’

Illustration 6: Bruce Conner: “Thumbprint”, 1965; Lithograph © 1965 Bruce Conner; Photo: The University of New Mexico Art Museum


quality of lithography and the abstract expressionist traditions as well as the manifest epitome of the artist’s authority in printmaking: by placing another fingerprint next to his signature, Conner made obvious use of the fingerprint’s authority in signifying artistic identity. As David Platzker writes: “Clearly Conner wanted to assert his unique identity as an artist in an environment where his artistic choices had become limited, and in ‘Thumbprint’ he places his most personal of signifiers down, plainly for all to see.” (Platzker 2000: 27)

Illustration 7: Chuck Close: “Keith/Random Fingerprint Version” (detail), 1977; stamp-pad ink and pencil on paper

© Chuck Close; Photo: Bevan Davies


Illustration 7a: Chuck Close: “Keith/Random Fingerprint Version”, 1977; stamp-pad ink and pencil on paper

© Chuck Close; Photo: Bevan Davies

Similarly, in 1979, Chuck Close makes use of fingerprints in con-structing another of his famous portraits: “Keith/Random Fingerprint Version” (see Illustrations 7 and 7a) meticulously transposes hues in-to differently shaded fingerprints. Close himself might stress the point of working with his fingers as being practical because “I could feel how much [ink] I’d picked up” (qtd. Shiff 2004: 36). Yet, the finger-print has as much relevance in serving as an artistic signifier which, in


regard to artistic identity, “comes with its authenticity guaranteed”, as Richard Shiff claims, “seeming to solve a critical modernist problem with a long history” (ibid.).

Roth’s work, however, contradicts such an easy solution. It does not pretend to solve any problems but rather points its finger at them. Roth touches upon subjects particular to the printed medium: that of mass-production in contrast to the unique artwork, as well as the ideal identity of artist and printer. The problem of declaring artistic legitimacy and originality to a work which is executed in a potentially multiple medium has concerned artists for quite some time. The prac-tice of signing, dating and limiting prints is commonly attributed to Francis Seymour Haden at the end of the nineteenth century (cf. Koschatzky 1975/1999: 26). Haden was also one of the most influen-tial writers when it comes to the idealist myth of artist and printer being the same person in order to produce a ‘true’ work of art (cf. Haden 1883) – still a virulent topic of debate well into the 1970s12. The fingerprint, the industrial age’s ultimate signifier for identity as well as an archetypal one for printing (cf. Kemp/Wallace 2000: 138-144), is not just an accidental mark, then. Much rather, it seems to evoke stereotypical images of the creative, ingenious peintre-graveur,

labouring days and even more nights at the printing press. Indeed, with those literally indexical marks of identity and physical labour on the sheet, one would not be surprised to find drops of sweat right next to them. Instead of drops, there is a signature (see Illustration 8). The traces of the printing process get legitimized and authenticated. With their direct proximity to the authorising signature, Roth places the fin-gerprints within the same field of discourse concerning reproduction, authenticity and artist’s identity that Bruce Conner and Chuck Close had worked with and which so very much characterises prints and printmaking.

12 For an overview of the respective debate, especially in regard to the Griffelkunst Editions, see Vogel 1973; for a prominent recent assessment, see Koschatzky 2001.


Illustration 8: Dieter Roth: untitled (detail), 1992; combination-print © Dieter Roth Estate, Basel; Photo: Author

Nonetheless, they do not fit in as smoothly as it seems at first glance. For the fingerprints are, in fact, not those of the artist, but were placed in the margin of each print on the explicit order of Dieter Roth to his printer Henning Bergmann when pulling an impression from the press13. Any traditional printer’s nightmare, they are present on each sheet, but consequently look different on every single one. In this way, the fingerprints add a quality to each print that contradicts both any ideal of identical reproduction as well as that of the identity of printer and artist. This very contradiction of identities becomes even more intricate when Roth replaces the previously used pseudonym “Heinrich Schwarz”, and in 1991 signs the sheets carrying his printer’s fingerprints with his actual name. By toying with the artistic use of fingerprints as signifiers of authenticity, Roth denies them this traditionally established status and uses them to different purposes. In the “Komposition” series of 1991 as well as in the untitled combina-tion print from 1992, the fingerprints mark the parergonal space out-

13 Cf. Interview with the Director of the Griffelkunst-Vereinigung, Harald Rügge-berg, on March 11th, 2003.


side the traditional border of the printed work and claim it as a space of artistic meaning.

This is evident in the 1991 series and even more so in the 1992 combination print, which subordinates any distinctive sequential ele-ment of the reworked series to the sheer result of medial conditions. Roth uses the excess whitespace around the image of the impressed plates as an artistic space to be activated with medial means. Thus, while the plate impression gets ‘cancelled’, its medial carrier gets charged with meaning. The fingerprints operate as keys which turn the contextual framing of the medium of intaglio into a textual one14.

The fingerprints point at the margin as the “l’à-bord” (Derrida 1978/1987: 54) of traditional printmaking, point at traces of produc-tion and process, point at questions of the identity of artist and printer. They point at questions specific to the printed medium. The finger-prints can thus be understood as physical markers to shift the concep-tual space of the printed work from the border of the mere imprinted image to that of the entire artistic outcome, including the paper and the traces of its artistic process, framed by its medial prerequisites. In this way, they can well be interpreted as keys within the established frame of the medium of intaglio. By transgressing the boundaries of such a framework both physically as well as conventionally, they allow for a medial ‘re-keying’, doing their work “not simply on some-thing defined in terms of a primary framework but rather on a keying of those definitions” (Goffman 1974: 81). It is this re-keying of defi-nitions which makes up the core of the ‘scandal’ that Laszlo Glozer attested for the medium of painting in the 1960. While printmaking, and especially a traditional medium such as intaglio, seems to lag behind in the explicit use of medial conditions, Dieter Roth’s print suite can well be interpreted as an indication of what might be called an ‘exit from the intaglio print’.

14 In accordance with Werner Wolf’s contribution towards a typology of framings in the “Introduction” to this volume, it might furthermore be interesting to think of the fingerprints as keys which also turn a covert into an explicit framing.


References

Derrida, Jacques (1978/1987). La Vérité en peinture. Paris: Flamma-rion. The Truth in Painting. Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Dobke, Dirk, ed. (2003a). Dieter Roth: Unique Pieces. Catalogue Raisonné. London: Thames and Hudson.

—, ed. (2003b). Dieter Roth: Graphic Works. Catalogue Raisonné 1947-1998. London: Thames and Hudson.

—, ed. (2004). Dieter Roth: Books + Multiples. Catalogue Raisonné. London: Thames and Hudson.

Documenta 11: Plattform 5: Ausstellung (2002). Exhibition Cata-logue. Kassel: Documenta.

Duro, Paul, ed. (1996). The Rhetoric of the Frame: Essays on the Boundaries of the Artwork. Cambridge Studies in New Art History and Criticism. Cambridge: CUP.

Glozer, Laszlo (1981). Westkunst: Zeitgenössische Kunst seit 1939. Cologne: DuMont.

Goffman, Erving (1974). Frame Analysis: An Essay On the Organiza-tion of Experience. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Haden, Francis Seymour (1883). The Relative Claims of Etching and Engraving to Rank as Fine Arts, and To Be Represented As Such in the Royal Academy. London.

Huber, Hans Dieter (1998). “Kommunikation in Abwesenheit: Zur Mediengeschichte der künstlerischen Bildmedien”. René Hirner, ed. Vom Holzschnitt zum Internet: Die Kunst und die Geschichte der Bildmedien von 1450 bis heute. Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz. 19-36.

Jacobs, Almut-Dorothee (1974). “Der Randeinfall”. Unpubl. Doctoral Thesis. Cologne University.

Junge, Henrike (1989). Wohlfeile Kunst: Die Verbreitung von Künst-lergraphik seit 1870 und die Griffelkunst-Vereinigung Hamburg-Langenhorn. Mainz: Phillip von Zabern.

Kemp, Martin, Marina Wallace, eds. (2000). Spectacular Bodies. London: Hayward Gallery.

Koschatzky, Walter (1975/1999). Die Kunst der Graphik. Munich: dtv.

—, (2001). “Druckkunst oder Kunstdruck? Zur Frage von Original-Graphik und neuen Medien”. Robert Stalla, ed. Druckgraphik: Funktion und Form. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag. 153-156.

Mendgen, Eva, ed. (1995). In Perfect Harmony: Picture + Frame 1850-1920. Zwolle: Waanders.


Platzker, David (2000). “Reconsidering the Fine Art Print in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. David Platzker, Elizabeth Wyckoff, eds. Hard Pressed: 600 Years of Prints and Processes. New York, NY: Hudson Hills. 27-34.

Rebel, Ernst (2003). Druckgrafik: Geschichte, Fachbegriffe. Stuttgart: Reclam.

Roth Time (2004). Exhibition Catalogue. New York, NY: Museum of Modern Art.

Rüggeberg, Harald, ed. (2004). Griffelkunst: Verzeichnis der Editio-nen – 1976-2000. Band II: 1988-2000. Hamburg: Griffelkunst-Ver-einigung.

Schweidler, Max (1938). Die Instandsetzung von Kupferstichen, Zeichnungen, Büchern usw.: Alte Fehler und neue Methoden bei der Beseitigung von Altersschäden an graphischem Kulturgut.Stuttgart: Max Hettler.

Shiff, Richard (2004). “Through a Slow Medium”. Terrie Sultan, ed. Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration. Exhibition Cata-logue. New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art. 19-44.

Tallman, Susan (1996). The Contemporary Print from Pre-pop to Postmodern. London: Thames and Hudson.

Vogel, Carl (1973). “Das Taschenbuch des bildnerischen Bereichs”. Grafische Techniken. Exhibition Catalogue. Berlin: Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. 103-110.

The Picture Frame in Question

American Art 1945-2000

Richard Phelan

The ground-breaking American art of the early 1950s – that of Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock – embarked on a programme of framelessness. Much was to be gained in terms of enunciation: directness, ‘wildness’, openness. As the painting relinquished its own consecrated space and became part of the viewer’s space, a new ‘external’ esthetic was to be explored in the 1960s and ‘70s by Frank Stella, Robert Ryman and Ellsworth Kelly. This paper will ask how (through what relays?) framing continued to take place as it inevitably did. What exactly was being framed henceforth? And what would the picture frame contrib-ute anew when it returned as it did return in the 1980s? Most crucially, what do these historical experiments reveal or confirm about picture framing before and beyond this period?

1. Introduction

Across to Achill, painted by American artist Peter Brooke1 in the year 2000, depicts a blurred and water-laden landscape we willingly rec-ognize as that of the island on the west coast of Ireland referenced in the title. The picture suggests the very act of taking a picture, the painting is an image of capturing an image, for it contains a ‘frame’ within its frame – a clear rectangle painted in black oil that isolates a portion of the landscape and implies that this part, too, could have be-come the whole painting and that the larger view was only one option. In this and other works2, Brooke quietly raises the question of what a painting is to include and whether the act of including and excluding is not at the very heart, or at least close to the nerve, of the creative

1 Peter Brooke was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1961 and works in New England. See, for instance, New American Paintings 26. Wellesley, MA, March 2000.

2 Such as Moy Estuary, 2000.

160 Richard Phelan

Peter Brooke, Across to Achill, 2000

process. In Across to Achill, what is outside the painted inner ‘frame’ is represented and yet its virtual absence is represented, too; moreover, what is inside the painted black frame seems equally uncertain: can we really be sure what it includes, what view is circumscribed by the oil marks on the canvas? If we can say that the ‘outside’ is potentially missing, we can add – in an Irish accent – that the ‘inside’ is partially missed. It would seem that the impact and resonance of the piece come from the fact that through this simple strategy of internal ‘framing’, the desire for the work is as manifest as the finished work itself. The work makes present the desire which engendered it – “l’amour réalisé du désir demeuré désir” is how the French poet René Char once

The Picture Frame in Question: American Art 1945-2000 161

encapsulated this desire that desire remain desire (Char 1965/1967: 73). This is one of the issues pulsing behind the questioning of the frame in late-twentieth-century art: is it the frame which mediates our desire for the painting? Is it the role of the parergon to capture and enhance the erotics of the ergon? And in the absence of the picture frame, is this energy dissipated or rechanneled?

In this article, I will be focusing on American visual art of the sec-ond half of the twentieth century: a period whose parameters might roughly be sketched as ‘framelessness’ and ‘framefulness’. To evoke the former, there is a well-known photograph of Jackson Pollock by Hans Namuth, taken at East Hampton in 1951, where we see the cel-ebrated American artist next to a large empty picture frame. He is sitting in front of a window frame and of course inside the frame of the photograph itself, the point of which is, I believe, to highlight the problematic link between the picture frame and Pollock’s paintings. To evoke what I call ‘framefulness’, I invite the reader to think of one of the series of installations accomplished by Allan McCollum in the early 1980s called Surrogate Paintings and Plaster Surrogates3.

Just as Gérard Genette asserts that the paratext is what makes a text a book (cf. Genette 1987: 7), it is tempting to advance that the frame is what makes a painting out of a canvas. The picture frame has the indeterminate status of the paratext: although we are not quite sure whether to consider it as part of the work, it surrounds that work in order to ‘present’ it, to make it present, and to enable its reception (cf. ibid.). Yet, there are many cases where the artist is clearly including the picture frame in the work (as McCollum does in his Surrogate

pieces) or equally clearly excluding the picture frame and grounding the work on that refusal (as Robert Ryman, for instance, continues to do in most of his work). I would like to analyse what is happening in these cases of clear inclusion and clear exclusion of the frame and examine how these extremes throw light upon a system which con-

3 See http://home.att.net/~allanmcnyc/thomaslawson.html, vs. 15-01-2005.

162 Richard Phelan

tinues to function with or without the object that we call a ‘picture frame’. This general system of the frame, which we might like to call the ‘parergonal system’, is composed of parts which can be displaced, replaced, or hypostatized. Perhaps, after all, it is the gaze which is ‘framed’ and not the painting. In this article, I would like to explore what the simple, perhaps excessive, formulation ‘framed gaze’ might allow us to understand and to overhear.

2. Common Ground

Semiotically, the picture frame signals the painting as painting. Re-peating as it does the limit of the painting’s edge, the frame not only marks, and makes us remark, the limit, but also reworks, or, rather, ‘replays’ that limit: playfully turning the anxiety of division into the exhilaration of mastery (cf. Tissot 1987: 22)4, of pleasurable semiosis. Framing, as it were, takes the fragmentation out of the fragment, and, by a form of illusionism, turns the fragment into a whole. Something which disrupts is placed within something sleek and smooth, just as art is placed within culture, if we can adhere momentarily to the metaphor of culture as the inevitable envelope of art.

For Louis Marin, whose model is Poussin, the frame operates a necessary semiotic closure: mathematically separating the painting from all that is not the painting, it declares with great solemnity that they are of strictly opposed orders, that there is not and there shall not be continuity between them (cf. Marin, 1986/1994: 318). The frame detaches the painting from the painter, the latter ceasing to be a pro-ducer and settling definitively for the position of viewer. Through the frame, the painting is put firmly in line with those works which have required and continue to require esthetic contemplation. The threshold 4 Tissot’s exact terms are ‘wound’ and ‘euphoria’: “Fragment comme fracture implique une blessure. […] Le cadre […] est un objet culturel, qui, par ses dorures et son épaisseur redouble cette brisure de la limite tout en l’euphorisant. [My italics]” (Tissot 1987: 22) (‘Fragment like fracture implies a wound. […] The frame […] is a cultural object whose gold and thickness repeat the rupture of the limit while at the same time making it euphoric.’)


of the frame activates, as it were, this specific modality of looking. This is why on the symbolic level the picture frame is traditionally ornated; the golden, or gilt, frame is a metonymy of the sacred space manifested in the gold ground of mediaeval painting. The frame is thus literally layered with a signifier of contemplation – the writings of Poussin confirm this pragmatically (cf. ibid.: 313).

The film theorist André Bazin calls the frame a disorientation zone (cf. Bazin 1958/1994: 188); as viewers we are invited to change our spatial and representational co-ordinates; the frame is a frontier at which we undergo a sort of briefing or debriefing, where our gaze is reprogrammed. This is especially congruent with the aim of the ba-roque; the baroque, of course, represents an apogee of the picture frame. Henry Heydenryk teaches us that the frame enables the transi-tion from the world of the picture to the world of the viewer – and vice-versa (cf. Heydenryk 1963: 5). It owes allegiance therefore to both worlds. Jacques Derrida in turn speaks of the ‘double disappear-ance’ of the frame: against the ground of the painting, and against the ground of the general text (cf. Derrida 1978: 71-73). The frame must, on the one hand, enable us to focus exclusively on the inner world of the painting, it must enhance our perception of that world; on the other hand, it must bring us back to or lead us from the wall on which it hangs, the room which it inhabits. History reveals the tension of the frame between these two poles: an urge to have it ‘match’ the room – as in English or French rococo of the eighteenth century – or the con-trary urge to bring the frame closer in line with the picture – as in the Post-Impressionist frames of Seurat or Whistler (see Cahn 1989).

Issues of protection and circulation, although palpably material, acquire a strongly symbolic dimension: a frame at once signifies that the work is to be treated with care and also ready to enter the market of similarly framed objects. Who has not been struck by the ease with which we pass from the frame-as-object to the frame-as-idea5, as if the

5 The frame-as-object corresponds to physical ‘framing’ and the the frame-as-idea to abstract ‘frame’ in Werner Wolf’s clarifications (see the “Introduction” to the

164 Richard Phelan

object were a concretization of a mental process? The French art his-torian Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, who translated and developed the work of Meyer Schapiro on the question, attributes the power of the frame to its capacity to move unnoticeably and with much stealth from the material to the metaphoric (cf. Lebensztejn, 1987/1999: 183). A limiting object which itself escapes limitation, with a double allegiance to the room and to the artwork, at once materiality and metaphor: that is what constitutes the difficulty, and of course the interest, of the frame and may account for its hold on the imagination, as the images of René Magritte and their annexations testify6. Magritte exposes the immanence of the frame, as if it were always on the horizon of visual experience – as if it were that very horizon. Indeed, in his anthropology of the photograph, Henri Van Lier calls man ‘the framing animal’, in so far as our upright position in the world forces us to define a geometric field of vision (cf. Van Lier 1986: 68). This insight is encoded in the French word for ‘frame’, cadre. We might speculate then that the concrete picture frame evolved according to the following sequence: physical process of perception, mental process of selection, physical fabrication of a selector. The sequence may then have become a loop of the two last terms.

3. Ground-breaking in America

In the late 1940s, the intention of artists such as Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, when they abandoned the picture frame, was to break a code and so attract attention to a gesture of sub-version. It would be possible to see this as a resurgence of the Dada virus brought to New York in the early twentieth century by two European masters of the frame, Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp. By arranging the presentation of the readymade, by adopting the glass

present volume). Unless otherwise specified, ‘frame’ in this article means physical picture frame.

6 See Patricia Allmer’s contribution to this volume.


case and the suitcase museum, Duchamp had demonstrated that pres-entation was a creative act, indicating almost as a conceit how little need come from the artist’s own hand and how much can come from authoritative placings7. American inventiveness with the picture frame may indeed be a heritage of Duchamp. Whatever the case, we are meant to read in the abandonment of the picture frame at mid-century a refusal of artistic convention, a refusal of the tradition of the easel picture, a refusal of recent European art history, of the small-scale domestic delights of cubism for example.

But, how does the absence of the frame signify in a system con-ventionally constructed on its presence? Artists like Rothko and Newman chose to discard the frame in order to highlight the material presence of the paint and the canvas. Framelessness emphasized the work as material trace, vulnerable, open, exposed and at-risk. It is true, indeed it is a truism, that a reproduction frustrates us of a full aesthetic experience; but perhaps there is also a sense in which we are drawn towards the experience of an artwork when it is presented within the white margins of a book, wherein the painting seems to deploy itself in an idealized space. For Germano Celant, this process of idealisation relayed through frame and museum is the very thrust of culture8. Framelessness on the gallery wall, however, pulls in just the opposite direction; it emphasizes the presence of the viewer’s body in the same room as the naked work. Such is the call of works like Bar-nett Newman’s The Wild or Vir Heroicus Sublimis of 1950.

7 It was in large part through the authority invested in it by Alfred Stieglitz’s pho-tograph that Duchamp’s urinal became a work of art, i.e. acquired the status thereof (see De Duve, 2000: 23-31).

8 In his splendidly metaphoric essay on the frame, Celant declares, “[w]hile seem-ing to be protected art is made untouchable: that is immaterial and ideal” (Celant 1982: 49).

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Newman’s zip, a term which the artist adopted in the 1960s9 to name the characteristic vertical band of paint which declares the space as his, can be read as a repetition of the painting’s edge. By figuratively thrusting the edge, as it were, into the painting, by replay-ing it through its rhythmic repetition on the real wall, the edge as sig-nifier of the limit is as if neutralized; the eye is distracted or hypnot-ized, and iterates the limit virtually on the space outside the painting. Unstopped by the punctuation of the picture frame, this movement of the gaze induces a sensation of limitlessness, maybe even of vertigo, intentionally of the sublime10. Framelessness in Newman serves to raise and suspend the question of limitation. The framed painting, by contrast, happily answers this question of limitation: ‘yes’, it says, ‘the limit is here, look, you can’t miss it, and, see, it can procure pleasure, excitement, delight’. Without the frame, however, the viewer in the early 1950s was at a loss, or, after Derrida (cf. 1978), ‘at a lack’. The result is that the question of the limit is left open, pending, in the air: present as a form of tension. The tension is soothed by the chromatic veils in Rothko, but thrust more bluntly upon us in Newman, whose paintings expose us to a form of anxiety, an anxiety given shape, an unattenuated anxiogenic form. Who is afraid of red, yellow and blue, his paintings insistantly ask11. Who is afraid of limitlessness?, we overhear as a subtitle. A partial answer to these questions might even be read in the fact that Newman’s paintings have been the object of direct physical attack12.

9 The artist used the term retrospectively and authorized others to follow suit, al-though the attendant connotations of speed are not wholly appropriate for all the work (see Temkin, ed. 2002: 69-70).

10 See Newman’s 1948 essay, “The Sublime is Now” (Newman 1999: 170-173).

11 Who is afraid of red, yellow and blue is the title of four pictures: I completed in 1966 and located in Los Angeles, II (1967, Stuttgart), III (1966-1967, Amsterdam), IV (1969-1970, Berlin).

12 Who is afraid of red, yellow and blue III was attacked in 1986 at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam.


Axiomatically, when the frame is absent, limitation is all the more present. Perhaps this might explain why, equivalent to the structural insistance on the limit in Newman, we may see a figurative resurgence of the ‘frame as limit’ in the paintings of Rothko. Despite its tactical banishment, what do we see looming out at us in the Seagram murals, those works which Rothko had so much trouble relinquishing, but the image of a portal or a frame? In the Seagram and the Harvard murals, the frame returns again and again as a tremulous and brooding image13. Achieved through veils of colour, a large format to be ex-perienced, felt as much as seen, in close proximity, Rothko’s program is one of atmospheric envelopment. All of this is perhaps sympto-matically thematised – and placed in front of us – in this ghostly fig-uration of the frame14.

Framelessness, then, is an enunciative strategy but it is at the same time a formal game which has consequences on the construction of the painting. The unframed work must simplify itself for maximum impact. This urge towards simplicity is recognized as one of the hall-marks of modern painting – in particular, that of the United States – and is evident in the work of Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, and Robert Ryman. What has emerged from this game is a new esthetic which Ryman calls ‘external’ and defines contrastively15. The ‘inter-nal’ esthetic, its counterpoint, arose in the early Renaissance when easel paintings replaced wall paintings and church pieces and when the perspectivist model became the standard. In that mode, the paint-ing refers inward, creating not only an inner world of representational 13 See http://www.nga.gov/press/2003/exhibitions/rothko/images.htm, vs. 15-01-2005.

14 There are, of course, good formal reasons for the figure of the frame to appear in paintings: the square and rectangle in a picture is homeothetic to the square or rec-tangle of the frame and the founding metaphor of the painting as window induces the window frame.

15 See Ryman’s interview with Jeffrey Weiss (Weiss, ed. 1998). The artist recalls an incident which took place at the MoMA in the 1950s when a frame was added to a Rothko painting in absolute contradiction with Rothko’s esthetic. “Even now [1997] this [difference of esthetic] is not completely understood”, Ryman claims (Weiss, ed. 1998: 368).

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illusion but also of non-figurative allusion: of contrast and detail, push and pull, all the work and play of composition. Abstraction can thus work internally, as the compositions of Hans Hoffman or of Willem De Kooning majestically prove.

The external esthetic, however, relies essentially upon the space outside the picture: created with a view to that space, it subordinates all internal features or local incident to an external address. The ex-ternal esthetic is a way of encompassing the viewer. It is towards this enlarged syntax that the work of Mark Rothko evolved, and from the mid-fifties to his death in 1970, his visual unit was less and less the painting, and more and more the room of paintings. The first room was a grouping of three paintings in a 1955 presentation at the Sidney Janis Gallery; this in turn inspired the room at the Phillips Collection in Washington in 1960; meanwhile, the artist created the Seagram Room, which he helped to recompose as the Rothko Rooms of the Tate Gallery in London; commissions came, or were attracted, for the Harvard Murals and for the final chapel in Houston. In fact, Rothko’s œuvre gives us an inkling of this structure of pieces within pieces as early as 1947-1948 in his Multiforms, whose inspiration was perhaps reinforced by his frequent study at the MoMA of that painting full of paintings, Matisse’s Red Studio, since its arrival there in 1949.

Through this questioning of the frame, twentieth-century artists managed to restore to the art work something of the fragility, the mu-tability – the timefulness – which the gilded frame had sought since the early Renaissance to deny. Rothko and Newman tore art out of its comfort zone – out of its envelope? – and placed it with an equal le-gitimacy under the sign of discomfort16. In the frame’s absence, the process through which their paintings establish and encode the link with the beholder and how they acquire status became the object of a new negotiation.

16 Legitimacy is one of the issues of the frame. See Vera Bayer’s contribution to this volume.


4. Framing the Gaze

In many pieces by the contemporary artist Mark Innerst, such asBrooklyn Seen from the East River (1985), what we are invited to look at is the picture frame itself. Of the same tone or texture as the canvas, so that we glide from one to the other and perceive them as unified, the frame occupies more total space than the picture surface. Because we have to work in order to see anything in the canvas, our gaze re-turns and feeds itself on the grain of the wood, the lines and convex shape, all the surface incident of the frame (the blotches, the stains, the glue marks). Signalling and protecting parentally the small format, the picture frame veils the mystery of the origin of the canvas and covers up its fragility as would a box by Joseph Cornell. The frame fulfills all its contracts here but one: it captures our attention, but does not let it go, as it should. The frame keeps us at a distance and can never be forgotten; indeed, Innerst’s works are always reproduced with their frames: they are photographed like installations. The production of the work seems to have long been accomplished, the reception is constantly starting: but, we are never quite inside the picture, as if stalled in the initial phase of looking. We are stuck in between, in the articulation of the inside and the outside of the piece, held as it were at the border. As an experiment, a tease, a form of playful irony, these pieces capture and play with our desire to see by widening the gap between that desire and the object to be seen. A facetious answer to Duchamp, it is indeed the viewer who does the work here, the ‘work’ of viewing which makes the painting. The frame intercepts and retains the gaze in what becomes its objective correlative, the frame. In these works, art is literally a ‘framed gaze’ – a phrase where ‘framed’ can be understood in its colloquial sense of ‘set up’, ‘pre-arranged’, ‘rigged’.

Allan McCollum, too, in the 1980s questioned the gaze, but with-out the pretext of a picture inside the frame. In his Surrogate Paint-

ings and his Plaster Surrogate series, he installed what appear to be picture frames on a wall, but his installation reverses their traditional

170 Richard Phelan

role: they invite us to look not at what they contain, but at their shape, their rhythmic arrangement, their patterns of form and color, the way they fill the wall and overwhelm the gaze. These frames have no in-ternal function: they do not isolate, delimit, or protect. Their role is ostentatiously theatrical: they signal and enshrine in an emphatic and ironical manner. They subvert the promise of uniqueness which a traditional frame politely proffers. Anachronism being as much McCollum’s mode as it is that of Innerst, such installations could also be seen as an archeological reconstruction of a gallery wall, a figurat-ive parody. What is more, the pieces seem to offer a version of psy-choanalytic theory: the surrogate objects, as they are titled, stand in for what we expect to see on the walls of a museum; they display their incapacity to satisfy our scopic drive, revealing the interchangeability of the objects which can only provisionally and partially satisfy our desire (cf. Gintz 1984: 17). Such Lacanian readings – with which they were greeted in France in the 1980s – can also be given a political turn: McCollum was said to be exposing the system of art objects, standard items of merchandise in an endless exchange. Yet, to our delight, the form addresses our esthetic as well as our critical faculties: the eye is captivated, seduced, intrigued, retained. We have the pleasure of being trapped and knowing that we are being trapped; in the various installations of these pieces, McCollum seems to be saying that if visual art is about looking, and that if looking is activated by frames, then no images are needed, the frames are enough.

This ironic mode is sustained too by McCollum’s contemporary, Louise Lawler, whose photographs revel in presenting artwork as an emblem of cultural privilege – the edge of a Pollock, for instance, vying for decorativeness with a tureen, or the hazy reflections on a shiny parquet flooring of a bright orange Stella. The viewer of a Lawler installation is both provided with another esthetic experience and at the same time invited to catch him- or herself in the act of esthetic consumerism in a potentially endless sequence. The installa-tions seem to be saying: ‘the frame’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the


conscience of the consumer king’. If Lawler insists on the fact that art involves endless enveloping, McCollum reminds us that the frame is one of the chief triggers of esthetic pleasure. The frame’s effect is especially heightened when it is set up serially, as if to say: ‘the frame’s the thing wherein I’ll couch the rapture of the viewer king’.

James Turrell could claim as much. In his early Skyspaces, in Sec-

ond Meeting installed in a Los Angeles garden, or in his still current Roden Crater project, what Turrell is doing is literally providing us with a frame within which to gaze. The technically elaborate fabrica-tion of the frame is veiled to make the viewing experience something extremely simple. The constructed devices for looking – Turrell’s thresholds, hightech cabins, helmets, perceptual cells, fitted craters – might well belong in a science museum, thus begging a specific ‘ques-tion of the frame’: are we to see this as science or as art? Turrell has us indeed look at the sky, the stars, the cosmos, at various (well-nigh palpable) qualities of light – old, new, natural, artificially enhanced. Yet, this experience is created with reference to an artistic tradition, to Monet, to Seurat, and to Newman17. Turrell considers what he does as painting in three dimensions inspired by a “desire not to be limited to the European structure of works on canvas” (Brown, ed. 1985: 43). Like Land Art, he does not try to represent nature – the clear blue sky of an Arizona winter, for example – he shows us nature; yet, it is not nature, it is a point of view. Turrell’s pieces provide a vantage point and a modality of looking; technology is used to create a frame to seal the beholder off from distracting sense data and intensify his gaze.

Turrell, Lawler, McCollum, and Innerst – each in their singular way – let us catch a glimpse of the workings of the parergonal system. A final piece will allow us to conclude: Untitled, 1984, by Robert Morris18. The image is almost kitsch – a wild incandescent sunset – but it is the grandiloquent grey frame that greets the eye with its

17 “Turrell’s light is visible within Modern art” (Adcock 1990: 208).

18 One of the works from this series of works can be found in the Musée de Greno-ble in France.

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skulls, its clenched fists and other macabre props which might have been commissioned for a late-nineteenth-century tombstone. What does a work like this tell us about the mission of the frame? Some-thing that – after Brooke – we know about the pressure of the ex-cluded, as well as something that – after Newman – we suspect about the frame’s denial of time, its attempt to conceal origin and foreclose decay. With its scrolls and swirls, its glitter and bravado, a baroque frame does its best to claim that the picture is timeless. Twentieth-century visual art sought to reveal the reverse: that a work like this piece is a set of gestures or a set of procedures, in any case a material production, a historical construct, a self-conscious artifice and not (or not essentially) an illusionistic representation. In the second half of the twentieth century, art exhibited not only its material supports but also its very conception and its disappearance – appearance and dis-appearance, conception and reception, these questions of the frame.

5. Conclusions

Rothko’s call for a sympathetic environment and Newman’s call for presence were repeated in the insistently external focalization of the American painting of the nineteen-sixties and seventies: the work of Ryman and Stella, but also of Kenneth Noland, Richard Tuttle, John McCracken, Robert Mangold, and Sol LeWitt. Newman wanted to suggest limitlessness and to convoke presence; he wanted to break with the traditions of presentation and make the beholder ill at ease, to put him in awe, or, if we can say this, ‘in angst’. Wildness, directness, openness: such are the terms of his parergonal contract. Rothko wanted to suggest that the painting could expand outwards to envelop the viewer; he created rooms which were among the first environ-ments. Openness, expansiveness and a certain vulnerability are part of his appeal to the viewer. Stella, Kelly, and Ryman explore the new literalness which the absence of the frame inaugurated. Their paintings do not entrench themselves in fictive space; they have become part of the viewer’s space. Hence the importance of borders and the signature


value of edges, whose sharpness defined a moment of art history. It could be argued that the installation – the standard mode of artistic enunciation of the 1980s and 1990s – came as much out of painting as out of sculpture.

In the 1980s, figuration was again possible as an avantgarde prac-tice. Postmodernism, characterized by quotation, began to quote the picture frame, and this was perhaps all the easier as the frame itself can be considered a form of quotation: the frame in a sense signifies ‘according to (Renoir, Bonnard, Vuillard…)’. The picture frame was quoted by Mark Innerst to activate fictions of anachronism as it was quoted by Allan McCollum to expose art as merchandise, culture as standardisation and to underline and recharge the scopic drive. Robert Morris gleefully revealed what the genteel custom of framing likes to hide: the anxiety and denegation aroused by the passage of time. James Turrell celebrated the act of looking by putting us viewers within a ‘frame’ – a frame of light which creates a frame of mind.

These American works from Rothko to Ryman highlight the fact that the placing of artworks in society is a question fraught with ten-sion, and the experiments with and without the picture frame remind us that the relation between work and viewer is always to be negoti-ated. They leave no doubt that the ‘outside’ of a work programs its ‘inside’. In so doing, they vindicate Duchamp and prove that the frame can be the locus, if not the generator, of creativity. Yet, para-doxically, the more control the artist seeks over the outside and the reception of his work, the more that outside retreats and the reception escapes him. Hence, yesterday’s sublime has become today’s banal formlessness – and the practice of leaving a canvas without a frame has long lost the resonance it had for Mark Rothko or Barnett New-man. As Seurat discovered, the frame retreats constantly to a higher level. Derrida, too, is vindicated.

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Since the middle of the twentieth century, it is the museum which reprograms the gaze (cf. Bazin19) as the frame used to. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for the proliferation of museums and for the pre-ponderant role museums play in the validation of contemporary art. There is no parergonal closure (cf. Marin) in Newman and Rothko, but both artists counted on the presentation of their works in the secu-lar temple of the museum (cf. Temkin, ed. 2002: 64). Rothko, as we saw, moved towards a larger closure, that of the room, and his work has solicited the organization of modalities of contemplation. For Newman, the question is more problematic – even in a museum pres-entation, we may wonder if a Newman painting receives the requisite energy to supplement it (cf. Derrida 1987: 74).

The abandonment of the picture frame, in Pollock’s time a subver-sive practice but by Basquiat’s time a standard one, has altered and recharged in energy the role of the museum. The museum provides protection, enhancement, and becomes the ground against which both the painting and the general text disappear (cf. ibid.: 71). The ‘exhila-ration’ of the frame (cf. Tissot) has become the exhilaration of the museum, today locus of creative work and site of experimentation (cf. Putnam 2001). Hence perhaps the proliferation of museums of con-temporary art as well as the heightened semiotics of museum architec-ture: the work being ‘attached’ to the museum, it is as if the museum in turn were obliged to ‘detach’ itself from its own ground. The play of interiority and exteriority is thus renewed.

References

Adcock, Craig (1990). James Turrell, the Art of Light and Space. Berkeley, CA/Los Angeles, CA: Univ. of California Press.

Bazin, André (1958/1994). Qu’est-ce que le cinéma? Paris: Le Cerf. Brown, Julia, ed. (1985). Occluded Front. Los Angeles, CA: Lapis

Press.

19 This reference and those that follow relate back to the works cited in Part 2 of this article, “Common Ground”.


Cahn, Isabelle (1989). Cadres de peintres. Paris: Hermann, RMN. Celant, Germano (1982). “Framed: Innocence or Gilt”. Artforum.

Summer, 1982. 49-55. Char, René (1962/1967). Fureur et mystère. Paris: Gallimard. De Duve, Thierry (2000). Voici: Cent ans d’art contemporain. Brus-

sels: Ludion. Derrida, Jacques (1978). La Vérité en peinture. Paris: Flammarion. Genette, Gérard (1987). Seuils. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Gintz, Claude (1984). New York: Ailleurs et autrement. Paris: Musée

d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Heydenryk, Henry (1963). The Art and History of Frames: An Inquiry

into the Enhancement of Paintings. New York, NY: Heineman. Lebensztejn, Jean-Claude (1987/1999). Annexes: de l’œuvre d’art.

Brussels: Editions La Part de l’Œil. Marin, Louis (1986/1994). De la Représentation. Paris: Gallimard. Newman, Barnett (1999). Selected Writings and Interviews. New

York, NY: Knopf. Putnam, James, (2001). Art and Artefact: The Museum as Medium.

London: Thames and Hudson. Schapiro, Meyer (1982). Style, artiste et société. Paris: Gallimard. Temkin, Anne, ed. (2002). Barnett Newman. Philadelphia, PA: Mu-

seum of Art. Tissot, Roland (1987). Éléments de Sémiologie du non-verbal. Van-

ves: Editions du CNED. Van Lier, Henri (1986). “Anthropologie du cadre photographique”.

Les Cahiers de la Photographie 19. Paris: Centre National des Lettres. 66-77.

Weiss, Jeffrey, ed. (1998). Mark Rothko. National Gallery of Art. Washington, DC: Yale Univ. Press.


Framing in/of Literary Texts


Framing Borders in Frame Stories1

Werner Wolf

The framings of frame stories (or frame tales) are special cases of framing borders and at the same time arguably their best known actualization in literature. Starting with a clarification of the literary concept of ‘frame story’ this contribution pre-sents a typology of the forms of framings which can occur in such frame stories as well as an overview of some important functions of such framings. In conclusion, frame stories are briefly discussed from a historical perspective.

1. Introduction

In literary studies, the term ‘frame’, for most scholars and students, is inextricably linked to a special case of framing borders, namely frame stories or frame tales/frame narratives2. Indeed, the framings of frame stories constitute one of the most important examples of how initial (but also terminal) framing borders can code relevant cognitive frames and generally contribute to the understanding of framed texts3. A volume on ‘framing borders in literature and other media’ would therefore be incomplete without a discussion of the framings of frame stories. However, among the framing devices in literature as well as in other media frame stories form not only one of the best known exam-ples but are arguably also the subject which has been most thoroughly researched to date4. Considering this situation it may therefore suffice

1 Original contribution to this volume not read at the conference ‘Framing in Literature and Other Media’.

2 As a rule, all of these terms are employed interchangeably as synonyms, and they will be used similarly in the following essay.

3 This contribution to the reception of the embedded text can, of course, also pro-vide information other than the signalling of meta-concepts.

4 Among the plethora of studies on frame tales one may mention Kanzog 1977, Picard 1987, Davidoff 1988, Seager 1991, Shryock 1993, Nelles 1997, Williams 1998: ch. 3, Stratmann 2000.

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to treat the subject in the summary manner of an encyclopedia entry5, starting with a discussion of what frame stories actually are and what major forms can be distinguished (and hence what forms framings can take here) before providing an overview of the most important func-tions of the framings of frame stories and opening some historical perspectives.

2. Frame story framings: definition and clarifications

What is the ‘framing’ of a frame story? To start with, one must make a terminological note, for according to established usage as well as in conformity with the term employed for the kind of texts under discus-

sion, namely ‘frame stories’, most scholars would call their framing parts not ‘framings’ but ‘frames’. Obviously, ‘frame’ in this sense differs from the sense of ‘cognitive frame’ discussed in the “Introduc-tion” to this volume as well as from picture frames. Rather than ab-stract meta-concepts the ‘frames’ of frame stories designate concrete parts of a text, and as opposed to picture frames, which are ‘parerga’ with reference to the framed pictorial representations, the ‘frames’ of frame stories are integral parts of the respective verbal representations which are located on a logically higher (diegetic) level. As narratives (or at least narrative fragments) they in addition partake in the narra-tive nature of the entire artefact, whereas picture frames can, but as a rule do not, partake in pictorial representation of the framed picture. However, what the framings of frame stories share with picture ‘frames’ and other framings discussed in this volume is an important function, which will be highlighted in more detail below, namely the coding of cognitive frames that are relevant for the reception of the framed part(s). This is why, in conformity with the terminology em-ployed in the “Introduction”, they can truly be called typical cases of literary ‘framings’. After what has been said, these framings can be

5 In fact, large parts of the present contribution draw on a dictionary entry on “Rah-menerzählung” which I have published elsewhere in German (Wolf 2005).

Framing Borders in Frame Stories 181

defined – at least with reference to prototypical cases such as Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (written c. 1380) or Mary Shelley’s

Frankenstein (1818) – as distinct parts (and therefore ‘overt

framings’) of fictitious (written) verbal stories, namely intradiegetic (fragments of) narratives that embed, by means of one or several secondary narrator(s) or narrator-character(s), one or more hypodiegetic text(s). These embedded texts are usually also narra-tives and constitute the centre or dominant part of the frame story as a whole, while the framing only forms its border. As a conse-quence of this dominance the framing is usually functionally oriented towards, or even subservient to, the framed part and serves, for instance, to introduce it. A typical frame story, therefore, contains at least one mise en abyme of storytelling – ‘storytelling’ including here also reports of dreams or written relations (it is thus not restricted to oral storytelling6). To this extent, the framings of frame stories are akin to the framing parts of dramatic plays within plays or films with-in films.

Narratologically, the framings of frame stories require further clarifications: they must be differentiated both from Genettean ‘paratexts’ as an alternative form of a framing border (see Genette 1987) and from framings through extradiegetic narrators. Both fram-ing devices must be excluded from the realm of frame story framings owing to two criteria: the first is the defining feature of the framings

under discussion here as intradiegetic parts of the main text. This excludes both paratexts and narratorial comments, the former because they are by definition not part of the main text, and the latter since they are located on the extradiegetic rather than on an intradiegetic

level. The second criterion is the typical narrativity of both frame story framings and framed texts: it neither applies to most paratexts (which may frame narratives but need not be narratives themselves) nor to extradiegetic narratorial framings (for which the same may be

6 For an opposing view see, however, Kanzog 1977: 322.

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said). The criterion of narrativity also permits us to differentiate be-tween the comparatively rare case of a frame story structure and the extremely frequent case of narratives in which characters’ speeches or thoughts are rendered – as long as these are not narrative themselves7.

It should, however, be noted that on the other hand there are also affinities between frame story framings and both narratorial comments and some paratexts. As for narratorial utterances, they are similar to frame story framings to the extent that both serve to transmit narratives through narratorial agencies (narrators or narrator-charac-ters). Thus, frame story framings can be regarded as analogous to an extradiegetic level that has been ‘inflated’ to the dimension of (parts of) a story. The same affinity applies to notably fictional paratexts of a narrative nature, e.g. elaborate prefaces recounting the circumstances of the gestation of the main text (as in “Bradley Pearson’s Foreword” in Iris Murdoch’s The Black Prince [1973]8).

A last defining criterion of frame story framings must also be clari-

fied, namely the afore-mentioned dominance of the embedded story. According to Richard Hornby’s useful typology of plays within plays (which, however, should admit many degrees in between) representa-tions that contain embedded representations are either “framed play[s]” or “inset play[s]” (Hornby 1986: 33-35). In an “inset play” the framing is dominant, while the framed part only appears to be an ‘island’ within the diegetic text – as for instance the play mis en

abyme “The Murder of Gonzago” in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The re-verse is the case in a “framed play”, exemplified by Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Similarly, one can also differentiate, in narrative fiction, between texts that contain one or more ‘inset stories’

7 I here differ from Nelles 1997: 122. Of course, if the speech of a character is a micro-narrative, the result would be some kind of a frame story structure, for the character would in this case turn into a secondary narrator, although the embedded narrative would rarely be the dominant part of the text as a whole.

8 Another, much earlier and less elaborate example of a narrative paratext framing the main text even with an ekphrastic mise en cadre (for this term see below) is Lon-gos’ third-century romance Daphnis and Chloe.


in an otherwise markedly dominant framing text (e.g. Apuleius’ Asi-

nus Aureus or Cervantes’ Don Quixote) and others in which the framed tale(s) is (or are) dominant (as in Thomas More’s Utopia). It is this latter case, in which the framing is the non-dominant part and forms a mere border, which is under discussion here. For here the framing structure usually appears right at the beginning as a salient and clearly discernible phenomenon which shapes the entire text from the start, thus justifying the term ‘frame story’ and in addition dove-tailing with the focus of the present volume on ‘framing borders’. It must, however, be noted that in research both types are sometimes referred to as ‘frame stories’, and consequently the framing parts are sometimes analyzed in an analogous way. This is, of course, possible in principle and can indeed make sense, since at least the immediate context of ‘inset stories’ fulfills the same framing functions (also with reference to coding cognitive frames and other functions) as the fram-ings of the alternative type. However, in this ‘inset type’, it is often difficult to delimit framing parts of the diegetic level that are func-tionally orientated towards the framed from other diegetic text parts that apparently have nothing to do with the framed story or stories.

As so frequently happens, concrete literary texts often override theoretical attempts at neat definitional distinctions. This is, for in-stance, the case with the criterion of dominance just mentioned. If it is employed in a quantitative sense only, Homer’s Odyssey cannot be classed as a frame story, for Ulysses’ embedded stories only comprise parts of book VII and books IX to XII – although in the Odyssey fram-ing structures are salient and the framed parts contain essential plot elements of this epic. Equally problematic in some cases is the crite-

rion that framings embed stories, at least if ‘stories’ are conceived of as verbal narratives transmitted by a narrator. For in a wider sense narratives could also be transmitted in other media (e.g. in film or drama). If so, then the embedding of dramatic parts, as exemplified by the historical sketches performed and described at length in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts (1941), would also be eligible for a discus-

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sion as frame story framings. In medieval studies, the structure of ‘framing fictions’ is occasionally even applied to genres such as the débat, which need not be narrative at all (see Davidoff 1988). Further-more, as indicated earlier, the exclusion of paratextual and extradiege-tic framings from the realm of frame story framings can in some bor-derline cases create difficulties, too. For instance in Tobias Smollett’s Humphrey Clinker (1771) the main epistolary novel is framed by quasi paratextual, seemingly factual letters, which contain not only the story of the edition of the framed letters but also other narrative elements, and this creates some affinities with the framings of frame stories. An analogous liminal case is Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus. In this novel Serenus Zeitblom theoretically appears as an extradiege-tic narrator, or more precisely as the biographer of his deceased friend Adrian Leverkühn; yet, Zeitblom becomes so prominent – not least in the opening pages of the novel – and also is doubly involved in a his-tory of his own (namely his own biography and the history of the fall of the Third Reich) that he shows affinities with a narrator-character in a framing story.

While some cases will always resist incontestable classification, it may often be helpful to ask whether a) a potential frame story framing occurs for the first time in an initial position (thus truly forming a ‘framing border’) and b) whether the narrating agency is involved in activities that are related to something else than only storytelling or storywriting and form more than a mere communicative situation (i.e. whether the potential framing possesses some degree of narrativity). If, in view of prototypical examples, both questions can be answered in the affirmative, this would indicate a frame story structure; if not, one may safely speak of an expanded extradiegetic situation9. Border-

9 While the application of these two criteria may as yet seem inconclusive with reference to Doktor Faustus they may at least help to clarify the situation in novels such as Tristram Shandy or Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children: in both cases the narratorial situation is firmly and almost exclusively linked to the storytelling itself (even Saleem’s impotence may be said to be so), and characteristically, the respective


line cases of this and a similar kind notwithstanding, it will usually present few difficulties to the reader to recognize a frame story fram-ing on seeing one, in particular if it is a classical case such as pres-ented by the framing passages of novella cycles or of narratives such as Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness (1899/1902) or even S. T. Coleridge’s ballad “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798)10.

3. Typology of frame story framings

Frame stories and consequently their framing parts occur in a variety of forms. They can be distinguished according to the following four criteria: a) the nature of the difference between framing and framed (resulting

in narratologically or ontologically distinct framings)11, b) the number of embedded (and hence framing) levels (single vs.

multiple ‘vertical’ framings), c) the number of parallel embedded texts and of narrator-characters

responsible for these texts, i.e., the extension of the influence of the respective framing parts (single vs. multiple parallel framings; total vs. partial framings),

d) the occurrence and position of the framing parts (complete fram-ings vs. incomplete framings with either missing terminal or miss-ing opening/initial framing).

Ad a) Frame stories must possess at least two hierarchically (‘verti-cally’) different levels. Following William Nelles (1997: 133f.),

the nature of this difference depends on two criteria: a narratolo-gical one (this refers to the distinction between diegetic and hypo-

novels do not begin with relevant details of these framing situations but start with what must be called the diegetic level and introduce them at some later point.

10 Although the present essay concentrates on short stories, novels and cycles of ‘tales’, it should be noted that frame story structures, of course, can also be found in ballads as a lyric form of narrative.

11 The possibility of distinguishing between homo- and heteromedial framings men-tioned in the “Introduction” does not apply to frame stories as typically homomedial verbal texts.

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diegetic, hypodiegetic and hypo-hypodiegetic levels and so on) and

an ontological criterion (this refers to the difference between [rep-resented] reality and fiction [as in dream narratives]). As a conse-quence, the framings under discussion are either narratologically and/or ontologically distinct from the framed stories. Curiously, there is, however, no agreement as to whether stories with ontolo-gically distinct framings (e.g. ‘reality’ as opposed to framed dreams or fictions) are special cases of the type of frame stories with a difference between diegetic and hypodiegetic levels or an alternative phenomenon (cf. Nelles 1997: 132-134). Yet, it seems obvious that the structure of frame stories only applies to those dream narratives that are recounted by a diegetic narrator-character (when he or she has woken up) rather than by an extradiegetic nar-rator. The reason for this is that all frame tales must possess narra-tologically distinct framing parts, for this is a sine qua non of frame stories as such. Consequently, an ontological distinction can be no more than an additional option, and therefore ontologically distinct framing structures are indeed special cases of narratologi-cally distinct ones.

Ad b) As for the number of embedded levels and hence the number of

‘vertically’ arranged framings, one can distinguish between singleembeddings (this more familiar case is, for instance, to be found in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer’s novella “Die Hochzeit des Mönchs”

[1883/84]) and multiple embeddings with recursive framings (“recurring frame[s]” in Williams’s terminology [1998: 123]). The latter form is rarer and produces more or less complicated ‘Chinese-boxes structures’, where recursive embeddings could in theory go on for ever (producing endless mises en abyme) but are, of course, in reality limited. The multiplication of frame story framings can be a powerful defamiliarizing device as in John


Barth’s short story “Menelaiad” from Lost in the Funhouse (1968), which contains as many as six embedded leves12.

Ad c) ‘Horizontally’, the number of embedded texts can also vary. There is in principle a continuous scale ranging from a single em-bedded story (as in the afore-mentioned novella by C. F. Meyer) to multiple parallel stories, as in novella cycles (Boccaccio’s Il Deca-

merone, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales). As a consequence, there are frame stories with framings whose ‘authority’ is restricted

to one embedded story (‘one-story framings’) as opposed to fram-

ings that refer to several stories (‘plural-stories framings’). In this latter variant additional possibilities of differentiation occur: the framing parts can, for instance, vary according to whether there is one narrative agency on which all embedded stories depend (as in The Arabian Nights, where Sheherezade is the only narrator) or whether each story is told by a different narrator (as in Boccaccio’s and Chaucer’s novella cycles); this differentiation usually coincides with the distinction ‘total vs. partial’ framing: where there is only one narrator framing tends to be ‘total’, i.e. is relevant to the entirety of the embedded text, while the authority of a single narrator among a plurality of narrators tends to be partial.

Ad d) According to the metaphor ‘frame’, which implies that the framing parts somehow surround the framed, the classical case of a

complete, ‘closed’ or “bracketing” framing (Williams 1998: 122), as epitomized by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, is for the framing to occur at least before and after the framed text part, that is, as initial and terminal framings (in novella cycles internal framings can additionally occur in between individual hypodiegetic stories).

There is, however, also the possibility of incomplete framings. The most frequent variant is to omit the concluding framing (frame

stories with missing terminal frame). This is frequently done for

12 See my essay “Defamiliarized Initial Framings in Fiction” elsewhere in this vol-ume.

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instance in order to avoid anti-climactic effects, as in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898). The single remaining part of such incomplete framings has been termed “introductory, or

prologue frame” by Williams (1998: 120). Occasionally, the in-

verse case can be observed: the ‘missing initial or opening frame’. Here it is only after the embedded text has come to an end that the reader notices that what he or she may have taken for fic-tional ‘reality’ or a diegetic story is actually an embedded, hypo-diegetic text or fiction (as for instance at the end of Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow [1973]). This device usually has a startling, disorientating or metatextual effect13.

4. Functions of frame story framings

The device of surrounding narratives by framings that are located on a higher level is an interesting phenomenon not only with respect to the surprising variety of forms that have developed in the course of litera-ry history but also to the range of functions it can serve (cf. Williams 1998: ch. 3, and Stratmann 2000: 28-31, although this study focusses only on a historically highly limited field). Among these manifold functions, which can occur either individually or in combination with each other, the following merit mentioning:

Arguably the most important among these functions is supplement-ing a basic deficiency which has arisen with the demise of oral story-telling in written narratives. Oral storytelling, both of an everyday kind and of a literary nature, inevitably takes place in a discernible communicative situation which considerably contributes to its mean-ing and function. In contrast, written narratives lack such a communi-cative situation, but the framings of frame stories can supplement this lack at least for the embedded text and thus fulfill an important text-centred function (in terms of the general functions of framings as

13 For more details see my essay “Defamiliarized Initial Framings in Fiction” else-where in this volume.


mentioned in the “Introduction”) – in particular if the text is supposed to be orally told by a narrator-character14. In compensating the situa-tional deficiencies of written storytelling the framings of frame tales even go beyond the functions of the two other devices which can also contribute to this function, namely paratexts and (overt) extradiegetic narrators (as observable in texts characterized by an ‘authorial narra-tive situation’). For intradiegetic framings not only permit the narra-torial agency to become an imaginable character, who addresses a well defined audience; the storytelling of such secondary narrators is in addition usually implicated in a story of their own and gets per-spective, motivation and meaning from this context (this is much less the case for typical paratextual and extradiegetic framings).

Framings of frame stories thus can furnish all the constituents of a communicative situation15. As they at the same time are also privi-leged places for all the codings of cognitive frames which such situa-tions can provide, they are typical examples of literary ‘framings’ in the cognitive sense explained in the “Introduction” to this volume.

Owing to the frequently graphic representation of these situations, these framings can also elicit what Ansgar Nünning has termed “Er-zählillusion” (2000) or “narratorial illusionism” (2004: 17). In terms of the general functions of framings this is obviously an instance of a recipient-centred function, but as “narratorial illusionism” in framings also confers a certain independent weight on the framings themselves, it may also be classified as a contribution to a self-centred function (see the “Introduction”). “Narratorial illusionism” is particularly fre-quent in simulations of oral storytelling. Such narratorial illusion per-mits the recipient to imagine him- or herself being present in a story-telling (or storyreading) situation. This kind of aesthetic illusion is

14 Another variant, which is already closer to written storytelling, would be the find-ing and reading of a manuscript, letter etc.

15 As Williams rightly emphasizes, they not only “specify a place and time – a set-ting – for the act of narrative”, they also “animate the scene with Narrative People, articulated in a dramatistic scenario of the exchange of narrative” (1998: 110, 113).

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typical of many narrative fictions and can in principle also be elicited by fictitious narrators and readers located on the extradiegetic level, although here again the illusion is usually less intense, for the normal ‘format’ of an extradiegetic level does not provide the narrative details of diegetic frame story framings. However, it should be noted that narratorial illusion, on whatever narrative level it may be centred, rarely constitutes the core or primary form of aesthetic illusion of a text (except perhaps for ‘experimental’ narratives such as Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy). This primary form consists in being re-centred or ‘immersed’ in a fictional world where more goes on than mere talking. I have therefore called aesthetic illusion that is focussed on the extradiegetic level ‘secondary illusion’ (cf. Wolf 1993: 102 and Wolf 2004: 331f.) as opposed to the primary ‘experiential illusion’ (“Erlebnisillusion”) which all narrative genres and media can provide irrespective of whether their stories are transmitted by narrators or not. As for their illusionist potential, frame story framings are special in that they can combine the secondary ‘narratorial illusion’ with the primary ‘experiential illusion’. For they usually combine the act of storytelling with the actions and happenings of a story (fragment), which provides a context for the embedded story and gives it perspective.

Like the narrators in oral storytelling situations, the narrator-char-acters of the framings under discussion can thus exert a particularly strong influence on us, the readers. This is not least the case since framings can easily provide ‘reception figures’ (the fictitious listeners or readers), whose reactions to the embedded story can influence our own response. Through their narrator-characters as well as such ‘re-ception figures’ framings can in particular set the embedded story in perspective by evaluating its characters and actions, by providing a motivation for its telling, by indicating its function and by drawing our attention to relevant frames of reference. All this can again to some degree also be achieved by paratexts and extradiegetic narrator-centred framings, yet tendentially frame story framings can unfold


influencing devices more easily and naturally – and continue to do so even at a time when both extensive paratexts and overt authorial nar-rators have become outmoded. Thus, the listeners of the Gothic tales told in the framing of James’s The Turn of the Screw can influence the real readers and their response to the ‘turn of the screw’ of the Gothic horror in the governess’s narrative by showing two main responses already to the tales that precede this narrative, namely “delicious” amusement (James 1898/1984: 146) and the thrill of horror which renders the listener “breathless” (ibid. 145).

As can be seen with reference to Gothic fiction and notably in The

Turn of the Screw, but also, for instance, in Frankenstein, the structure of a frame story can also be used in order to enhance suspense (and thus once again, the reader’s involvement and aesthetic illusion). This is done by following the strategy of announcement and delay: the framing announces something terrible or enigmatic (as in the framing of Frankenstein the appearance of a “gigantic stature” in a “sledge [...] drawn by dogs”; Shelley 1818/1968: 279), while it denies its ex-planation and postpones it to an often much later stage in the embed-ded story. (In Frankenstein, this postponement is motivated by the narrator-character’s illness and his unwillingness to go into the painful details of his story before he finally decides to embark on the “relation of [his] disasters” [285].) Frequently, the suspense-creating (and thus recipient-centred) function of frame structures is coupled with their repeated or recursive employment, so that the all but unspeakable secrets of Gothic villains and their unconscious or sinful urges (as in Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer [1820]) virtually appear to be relegated to the ‘subterraneous’ depths of ever remoter hypodiegetic levels.

A further important possible function of frame story framings, and in particular of those that create suspense, is to implicitly authenticate the embedded stories and thus at the same time to increase both the emotional and the illusionist involvement of the readers. Such (text- as well as recipient-centred) authentication usually consists in triggering

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the frame ‘factual text’, frequently by “naming [the] origin” of the embedded text (e.g. in the form of a manuscript found) and thereby “self-validat[es]” the narrative (Williams 1998: 114). Typically, such authentication is used for embedded stories that otherwise would seem improbable and are therefore in special need “to quell disbelief” (ibid.), for in such cases the framing, which is usually credible, if not ‘realistic’, and at any rate apparently reliable and probable, establishes a bridge between the everyday experience of the readers and the fantastic hypodiegetic stories. This is arguably why More’s Utopia

(1516/1551), Carroll’s Alice-stories (1865/72), H. G. Wells’s The

Time Machine (1895) and so many Gothic novels employ the structure of frame stories. For instance, in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein it is indeed the convincing details both of Captain Walton’s personality and his expedition to the northern sea and of the arrival of the exhausted, fatally ill Frankenstein that give credence to Frankenstein’s fantastic narrative about having constructed and subsequently abandoned an artificial human being16.

Interestingly, frame story structures can be employed not only to intensify the reader’s involvement but also for what may appear to be the reverse (and in some cases in fact is exactly this): the creation of distance. Such distance can have various degrees of intensity and be of different kinds: it can be of an aesthetic kind – and then counteracts aesthetic illusion (as will be seen later on) – but it can also be of a kind that dissociates the (implied) author from embedded narrators as far as implied norms and worldviews are concerned. Thus, framing structures can contribute to what Michail Bakhtin saw as a typical potential of the novel anyway, namely to give voice to a ‘polyphonic’

16 Actually, in Frankenstein, there is a combination of a partly ‘realistic’ setting (an English ship) with an ‘exotic’ one (the Arctic sea) that explicitly serves to authenti-cate the eponymous hero’s tale, as he himself remarks to Captain Walton: “Were we among the tamer scenes of nature I might fear to encounter your unbelief, perhaps your ridicule; but many things will appear possible in these wild and mysterious regions which would provoke the laughter of those unacquainted with the ever-varied powers of nature [...]” (Shelley 1818/1968: 286).


plurality of social, ideological, moral etc. discourses. This ‘skaz’ (cf. 1975/1981: 262) may be realized through characters’ speeches in non-framed narratives, but also in ‘framed’ and ‘embedded’ texts (cf. ibid. 32017).

A good example of the distancing potential of a framing which is achieved by making a particular character with a particular ‘voice’ responsible for telling an embedded story can be seen in the “Pro-logue” to “The Miller’s Tale” in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: here distancing of a moral kind seems to be necessary since the following carnivalesque fabliau, according to generic conventions, contains drastic sexual and scatological matters and does not conform to poetic justice at all18. In fact, several devices are employed in order to ‘con-tain’ the moral non-conformism of the story and thus to fulfill a con-text-centred function (the mediation between text and cultural con-text): the most drastic device is certainly an intervention of the narra-tor, who even advises potentially squeamish readers “whoso list it nat yheere, / Turne over the leef and chese another tale” (Chaucer 1380/1974: 48). In addition, and this is where the narrative character of frame story framings comes to bear, the miller is repeatedly charac-terized as drunken: “The Millere, that for dronken was al pale, / So that unnethe upon his hors he sat”. “Oure Hooste” begs him not to tell his story, and criticizes him drastically: “Thou art a fool; thy wit is overcome” (47). This codes the following tale as ‘not to be taken seri-ously’, all the more so as the miller himself admits to his state and, continuing the distancing tendency, excuses himself for potentially offending matters: “That I am dronke, I knowe it by my soun; / And

17 Bakhtin, who does not seem to take special notice of frame story structures as such, here speaks of “‘incorporated genres’” but also mentions “inserted short stories” (1975/1981: 320).

18 At the end, as the result of an intrigue carried on by his young wife and her lover, the cuckolded husband is discredited as mad while neither his adulterous wife nor her lover are punished.

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therefore if that I mysspeke or seye, / Wyte it the ale of Shouthwerk, I you preye” (47f.)19.

Yet, the combined resistance of the pilgrims, including the Reeve’s, who orders the miller, “Stynt thy clappe!” (48), cannot pre-vail over him – and actually is not meant to since the narrative func-tion of this resistance is not to prevent the telling of the embedded story but to create what actually must be called a sham distance. For the real strategy is to signal moral distance in order to whet the reader’s appetite. Indeed, the story is rendered interesting as salacious entertainment through the very distancing gestures in the framing, for the allegedly disparaging critique of the expected tale by the Reeve as “lewed dronken harlotrye”, “synne” and “greet folye” (48) is in fact a covert coding of the generic frame ‘fabliau’. As the fabliau was known to be highly entertaining in a specific way, we here witness yet another noteworthy (recipient-centred) function of framings with ref-erence to the framed story which Williams termed “[a]dvertising nar-rative” (1998: 116).

A particularly discernible distance with reference to the embedded story can be achieved by attributing this story to an unreliable narra-tor-character20. A recent example of the employment of this device is Peter Carey’s novel My Life as a Fake (2003). In this narrative, a highly dubious and perhaps even insane poet called Christopher Chubbs tells his questionable autobiography to Sarah, the main char-acter and first-person narrator of the framing. The most incredible ele-ment of the embedded autobiographic tale, which is revealed to Sarah in bits and pieces, consists in the alleged fact that Chubbs has invented a fellow poet, McCorkle, complete with biography and lyric texts and that this invention suddenly appears to turn real and haunts Chubbs, 19 Another example of a similar employment of a framing is Abbé Prévost’s Manon Lescaut (1731): in this novel the framing border, too, creates a safe (moral) distance between the implied – but perhaps also the real – author and the embedded narrative with its celebration of sentiment and love that openly includes sexuality.

20 Research on unreliable narration (cf. e.g. Nünning, ed. 1998) tends to focus on extradiegetic narrators and neglects unreliable narrator-characters.


whose actual identity with, or difference from, this invention never becomes entirely clear.

My Life as a Fake incidentally provides an illustration for yet an-other function of the framings of frame stories, a function in which the afore-mentioned effects of providing Bakhtinian ‘polyphony’ and setting the embedded story ‘in perspective’ get a special meaning, namely to introduce (or at least to contribute to) the pluri- or multiper-spectivity of a narrative. For in the framing of this novel Chubbs’s hypodiegetic autobiography as well as his personality are not only evaluated by himself and Sarah but also by another diegetic character: John Slater, ex-lover of Sarah’s mother. Slater’s perspective on Chubb is quite clear, as he considers him stark mad (and the alleged poet McCorkle a figment of Chubbs’s insane brain), while Sarah is not so sure, and Chubbs himself is, of course, convinced of his sanity. Providing two or more different perspectives on an embedded story as in this case is, however, only one of several possibilities through which multiperspectivity can be elicited by the structure of frame stories, the general condition being that there are at least two different views on the same phenomenon either in the framing alone or owing to the combination of perspectives in both the framing and the framed text. As I have dealt with the multiperspectival potentials and forms of framings (of frame stories but also of framings in a more general sense) in detail elsewhere (see Wolf 2000) no further discussion of this means of creating distance with reference to the framed story seems necessary here.

Frame story framings can also elicit distance, aesthetic and other-wise, – as well as illusionist involvement – in another respect: as mises

en abyme of storytelling frame stories are not only intrinsically self-referential (in the sense of containing similar structures that mutually refer to each other) but also possess a self- or meta-reflexive potential as representations of representation (cf. Seager 1991: 24). This potential is frequently actualized in explicit metafictional thema-tizations (notably of literary frames) in the framing parts. There are

196 Werner Wolf

multiple ways to do so and again many different functions apply. One of them is the coding of ontological, generic and other aesthetic frames that are relevant to the embedded story. For instance, the hypo-diegetic narrative can be addressed as a ‘true’ story, as in Franken-

stein, where the eponymous hero prefaces his tale by emphasizing that it “conveys in its series internal evidence of the truth of the events of which it is composed” (Shelley 1818/1968: 286). In contrast to a simple affirmation of the frame ‘truthful narrative’ (which is a particularly frequent case of authentification), framings of frame stories can also contain more subtle codings, e.g. of the frame ‘enig-matic story’, thus alerting the reader to possible ambiguities and dif-ficulties in interpreting the embedded story. This is, for instance, the case in James’s The Turn of the Screw, which metafictionally thematizes the intriguing ambiguity of the embedded text at least with reference to the object of the secondary narrator’s, the governess’, love (“The story won’t tell [..] not in any literary vulgar way”, as Douglas, one of the characters, says [147]). In a similar way, the fram-ing of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness contains a warning that the teller-character Marlow’s ‘yarn’ will not “have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut”; rather, the framed story will have a “meaning” that does “not [lie] inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze” (Conrad 1899/1986: 1816 f.).

If the meta-referentiality in James’s and Conrad’s framings is still relatively neutral with reference to the aesthetic illusion of the (em-bedded) text, since it is ‘naturalized’ by the framing story-telling situation, in other cases the metafictional and metanarrative self-re-flexivity can be intensified to the extent that the credibility and hence the aesthetic illusion of the entire text is undermined. This can be observed in ‘metafictions’ that explore problems, limits or potentials of storytelling to some depth and which use the device of a frame story in the service of such metatextual exploration. Well-known ex-amples of this kind are Flann O’Brien’s Chinese-boxes novel At


Swim-Two-Birds (1939) or Italo Calvino’s Se una notte d’inverno un

viaggiatore (1979). A function of the structure of a frame story that is particularly im-

portant is to create aesthetic coherence. This can be achieved in vari-ous ways. An obvious and very efficient means is to use the level of histoire of the framing in order to create a plausible situation which enables the embedding of multiple parallel stories. This is the case in novella cycles such as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, where the framing as a formal device permits the author – through the reference to the frame ‘pilgrimage’ – to assemble, in one and the same macro-text, a plethora of heterogeneous micro-texts. The framing structure em-ployed by Chaucer enables him not only to give voice to narrator-characters from different social groups, thus dramatizing the afore-mentioned Bakhtinian polyphony of dialogic voices, but also to re-present different narrative genres that otherwise could not effectively have been assembled in one and the same work. In experimental works such as Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste (written 1771-1775), the device of reducing a diegetic story to the function of framing hypo-diegetic stories can, however, also have the exact opposite of a unify-ing effect and explode the text into heterogeneous and often incom-plete fragments.

The framings of frame stories can also contribute to the aesthetic unity of the text as a whole (and thus fulfill yet another text-centred function) by other means, in particular by the establishment of thema-tic relationships between framing and framed texts, which is also a way, albeit often a covert one, of coding relevant frames of reference. For – in contrast to explicit comments on embedded stories by narra-tor-characters – such relationships often remain implicit. This very implicitness produces Leerstellen (gaps of meaning) in the Iserian sense which form aesthetic challenges for the readers who have to create textual coherence for themselves. In substance, such coherence can exist in relationships of causality or explanation (where the fram-ing contains explanatory elements that are helpful for the reception of

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the framed text)21, but they can also operate along the more general lines of similarities and contrasts. Thus, in Jeremias Gotthelf’s novella “Die schwarze Spinne” (1842) the ‘homely’ biedermeier framing contrasts with the uncanny Gothic content of the embedded tale, whereas in Frankenstein remarkable thematic and normative parallels emerge between the author of the framing letters, Captain Walton, with his ruthless curiosity and urge to detect the northern passage at all costs, and Frankenstein, the teller of an embedded tale that testifies to a no less ruthless will to detect something regardless of (moral) costs.

The web of relationships of similarity (and partial contrasts) that can be created between framing and frame can operate in two ways: there is first, the usual mise en abyme relation, where the embedded story (or stories) shed(s) light on the framing. This is usually the case in isolated, non-dominant ‘inset’ stories (which are analogous to Hornby’s “inset plays”). Yet, the reverse is also possible (although this has found less attention in research). It is repeatedly found in the very texts which are under discussion here, namely texts where the framed story is dominant and the framing border therefore function-ally subservient to it. In this case, rather than shed light through reve-latory similarities in a ‘bottom up’ process – as in mises en abyme – the framing implicitly sheds light on the framed text in a ‘top down’ process. As narratology has failed to provide a separate term for this reversal of mise en abyme, I have proposed elsewhere to baptize it ‘mise en cadre’ (Wolf 1999: 104, Wolf 2001: 63f.). As opposed to mise en abyme, in which a discrete lower-level element or structure ‘mirrors’ an analogous element or structure on the framing higher level, mise en cadre consists of some discrete phenomenon on the upper, framing level that illustrates – usually in an anticipatory way – some analogous lower level phenomenon of the embedded level so

21 As the example of the Arabian Nights shows, the relation between embedded and embedding narratives can even be one of influence (as long as the embedded stories last, Sheherezade is permitted to live).


that a discernible relationship of similarity is established between the two levels22.

The framing of Conrad’s afore-mentioned Heart of Darkness pro-vides a graphic example of mise en cadre: as is well known, the em-bedded story thematically centres on the ambivalence and in particular ‘darkness’ not only of colonized ‘Africa’ as a fascinating and disturb-ingly wild continent, whose ‘heart’ Marlow’s expedition attempts to reach in search of the missing Mr Kurtz, but also of the white colo-nizers, whose motivations are revealed to have a remarkably dark side. Ultimately, and on the most general level, the ‘heart of darkness’ that is thematized in the story’s title pessimistically refers to the human heart full of gloomy ‘abominations’, a heart that is covered by a bright but deplorably thin varnish of civilisation, moral and humanist ideals. This ambivalence, with an emphasis on the gloomy side of civiliza-tion, is also and conspicuously mise en cadre in the landscape descrip-tion contained in the opening framing. In fact, this description serves as a coding of parts of the implied worldview and rather pessimistic view of man and thus as a marker of a complex cognitive frame. The scene is set on board a ship anchored in the river Thames. Later on, in Marlow’s preface to his tale, the Thames is linked to the ambivalence of the former Roman civilization whose “[l]ight came out of this river” in the midst of the “darkness” and “wilderness” of early Britain (Conrad 1899/1986: 1817). The river, which is made to resemble “an interminable waterway [...] leading to the uttermost ends of the earth” (ibid. 1814f.) as such is already a mise en cadre, as it foreshadows – and parallels – the great African river on which Marlow, in his tale, sets out on his expedition into the heart of the African darkness. Even more revealing is the play of light and gloom which the temporal

22 The term was already used by Larroux (1994) in a contribution to a colloquium held at the Université Toulouse le Mirail in 1992 (cf. 252), but Larroux, in a discus-sion of different meanings of cadre, employs mise en cadre simply for denoting the fact of adding a framing text to another, more important text (he thus does not distin-guish mise en cadre from ‘embedding’ or mise en abyme and in fact uses the term “enchâssement” as a synonym of mise en cadre [247]).

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setting provides, for the scene takes place at sunset: “The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance” (ibid. 1815) – yet it is a tarnished “brilliance”, tarnished in the west by a “gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth”. This darkness enveloping London, “the monstrous town” (ibid. 1816) as the centre of the British Empire (which here stands metonymically for all European colonial empires23), is repeatedly mentioned and one of the most salient features of the framing description. It is a gloom which triggers ideas of decay and death: “[...] the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men” (ibid. 1815) – and the fact that the crew on board the ship starts a game of dominos referred to as “bones” (ibid.) chimes in well with this image of decadence. All these elements – and there are more in this framing – are powerful anticipa-tions of parts of the ensuing hypodiegetic story: the decadence of the colonial power, the gloom which Kurtz’s negative epiphany and its enigmatic verbalization in his last minutes spreads (“The horror! The horror!” [ibid. 1873]) as well as the ultimate death of this seeming pillar of (Western) civilization.

A last important function of frame story framings that merits men-tioning is the possibility of defamiliarizing the usual type of framing structures. As I have dedicated a separate essay to these options it may suffice to mention the perhaps most radical defamiliarization, namely ‘metaleptic’ frame-breaks. Where this device is used, a paradoxical transgression takes place between framing border and framed text. This can, for instance, be seen in Michael Ende’s Die Unendliche

Geschichte (1979), where the principal character of the framing, a little boy reading a fairy tale book, is suddenly able to enter the world of this fairy tale not only metaphorically (which would be an apt way of describing the immersive workings of aesthetic illusion) but in

23 This includes the Congo, where the African part of the embedded story is set.


person. Often metalepses (which, of course, can also take place between the extradiegetic and the intradiegetic levels) serve a recipi-ent-centred function (by undermining aesthetic illusion) as well as an implicitly metafictional function: by stretching the (fantasy) potential of imaginary worlds to an unrealistic, even ‘impossible’ extent, meta-lepses lay bare the ruling frame of such worlds which is usually con-cealed, namely their fictionality.

5. Conclusion: the long history of employing framings

in frame stories

As one can imagine, radical frame breaks as in ‘ontological’ metalep-tic transgressions, where characters leap over the boundary between a framing (diegetic) ‘reality’ and a framed (hypodiegetic) fiction or vice versa, are relatively recent and in fact have become more or less a hallmark of postmodernist fiction (while certain ‘rhetorical’ forms of metalepses between the extradiegetic and the intradiegetic levels are much older24). As such, these kinds of metalepses are a last functional addition to a narrative device that is arguably as old as consciously shaped literary storytelling (and storywriting) itself. The existence of a frame structure in an Egyptian series of tales (Miraculous Tales from

the Court of King Cheops) from the third millenium B. C. at least renders this thesis plausible (cf. Picard 1987: 37-39). The most famous early example of the use of framings in a frame narrative in non-European world literature is, of course, the collection of tales Arabian

Nights. In medieval and Renaissance European literature, the device of cyclical frame stories was repeatedly used, for instance and as already mentioned, by Boccaccio in Il Decamerone (written 1349-1353) and by Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales, and also by Marguerite de Navarre in L’Heptaméron (1558). A Renaissance example of the

24 For such ‘rhetorical’ metalepses involving a narratorial activity which is seem-ingly dependent on the diegetic story of the type ‘while our hero is asleep I may ex-plain to the reader ...’ see Ryan 2004: 452.

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framing of single stories through a frame story structure is Thomas More’s afore-mentioned Utopia, where the framing serves both as an authentification of fantastic material and as a distancing device with regard to the revolutionary matter contained in the description of the Utopian state.

In the eighteenth century important contributions to the genre were made in French literature by Abbé Prévost (Manon Lescaut [1731])and in Germany by Goethe (Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewander-

ten [1795]). In the nineteenth century the frame pattern was also em-ployed in many Western literatures. As for literature in German, one may mention E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Serapionsbrüder (1819-1821), Wilhelm Hauff’s Märchen (1825-28), Gottfried Keller’s Die Leute

von Seldwyla (1856 and 1873/74) and Theodor Storm’s Der Schim-

melreiter (1888). In France, the form was also used, e.g. by Honoré de Balzac (“Facino Cane” [1836]) and Prosper Mérimée (Carmen

[1845]). In the United States, the best known 19th-century novel in this context is certainly Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850), and in Great Britain, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847), but there are also numerous other examples, for instance Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1872), Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (1868), H. G. Wells, The Time

Machine (1895), Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1899/1900) and Heart of

Darkness. In the twentieth century the form of the frame narrative has been called dead (for details see Stratmann 2000: 6f.), but erroneously so. It is on the contrary rather remarkable to what extent this form has been used from the twentieth century onwards in particular for ‘ex-perimental’, metafictional but also generally for epistemological ex-plorations and underminings of the opposition ‘reality’ vs. fiction. After isolated examples of that kind in modernism (Flann O’Brien, At

Swim-Two-Birds, Jorge Luis Borges, “Las ruinas circulares” [1941]) the heyday of the use of frame structure in this way is, of course, postmodernism (e.g. Italo Calvino, Se una notte d’inverno un viaggia-

tore, and Alasdair Gray, Lanark [1982]), and has even spread to chil-


dren’s literature, as exemplified by the afore-mentioned novel Die

Unendliche Geschichte by Michael Ende. Sometimes, the metaleptic frame breaks are carried to an extreme, as in Julio Cortázar’s classic story “Continuidad de los parques” (1956), where it is suggested that the diegetic reader of a hypodiegetic novel is murdered by a character from that novel. Another, even more radical example is Gabriel Josi-povici’s well-known short story “Mobius the Stripper” (1972), in which framing and frame are so positioned as to continually form a ‘strange loop’ so that each framing paradoxically can also be read as a framed story. Thus, the history of the employment of framing borders in literary frame tales reveals an ongoing vitality and amazing variety of forms and functions that is hardly surpassed by any other medium.

One of the most recent proofs of this vitality is the latest publica-tion of short stories by one of the grand old men of U.S. postmodern-ism, John Barth, a collection of stories revealingly entitled The Book

of Ten Nights and a Night (2005). The framing of this collection, “In-vocation: ‘Wysiwyg’”, is addressed, in the by now almost hackneyed postmodernist fashion of playfully recycling well-known narrative conventions, to the “Storyteller’s Muse”. As a part of the by now equally traditional reflections on these conventions the narrator, or rather fictitious author, called ‘Graybard-the-Talester’, also explains why he employs a framing device: by “put[ting] these originally un-

related tales into narrative frame”25 his “purpose” was to

connect[...] their dots to make a whole somewhat larger (and perhaps a bit frisk-ier) than the mere sum of its parts, as in such exemplary instances as The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night; also Boccaccio’s Decameron, Marguerite of Na-varre’s Heptameron, Giovanni Battista Basile’s Pentameron, and other such –amerons... (Barth 2005: 3)

As becomes immediately clear, the resulting “Hendecameron”, as the Muse aptly calls Barth’s book, is a series of framed tales that is both metafictionally self-conscious of a long tradition of frame stories and an ironic continuation of this tradition. Thus, the frame story most

25 The stories of Barth’s collection previously appeared in different publications.

204 Werner Wolf

certainly defies any critic who would still like to announce its death; it rather continues to thrive as a form that is alive and kicking and will presumably remain so for many epochs to come.

References

Bakhtin, Mikhail (1975/1981). “Discourse in the Novel”. Mikhail Bakhtin. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakh-tin. Ed. Michael Holquist, transl. Caryl Emerson/Michael Holquist. Austin, TX: Univ. of Texas Press.

Barth, John (2005). The Book of Ten Nights and a Night. London: Atlantic Books.

Chaucer, Geoffrey (1380/1974). The Canterbury Tales. Geoffrey Chaucer. The Works. Ed. F. N. Robinson. London: OUP. 2nd ed. 1-265.

Conrad, Joseph (1899/1986). Heart of Darkness. M. H. Abrams, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York, NY: Nor-ton. Vol. 2. 1814-1880.

Davidoff, Judith M. (1988). Beginning Well. Framing Fictions in Late Middle English Poetry. London: Associated Univ. Presses.

Genette, Gérard (1987). Seuils. Collection ‘Poétique’. Paris: Seuil. Hornby, Richard (1986). Drama, Metadrama, and Perception. Lon-

don: Associated Univ. Presses. James, Henry (1898/1984). “The Turn of the Screw”. Henry James.

The Asperns Papers and The Turn of the Screw. Ed. Anthony Curtis. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 143-262.

Kanzog, Klaus (1977). “Rahmenerzählung”. Werner Kohlschmidt, Wolfgang Mohr, eds. Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschich-te. 2nd ed. Vol. 3. Berlin: de Gruyter. 321-343.


Nelles, William (1997). Frameworks: Narrative Levels and Embedded Narrative. New York, NY: Lang.

Nünning, Ansgar (2000). “‘Great Wits Jump’: Die literarische Inszenie-rung von Erzählillusion als vernachlässigte Entwicklungslinie des englischen Romans von Laurence Sterne bis Stevie Smith”. Bern-hard Reitz, Eckhart Voigts-Virchow, eds. Lineages of the Novel: Essays in Honour of Raimund Borgmeier. Trier: WVT. 67-91.


— (2004). “On Metanarrative: Towards a Definition, a Typology, and an Outline of the Functions of Metanarrative Commentary”. John Pier, ed. The Dynamics of Narrative Form: Studies in Anglo-American Narratology. Narratologia 4. Berlin: de Gruyter. 11-57.

— ed. (1998). Unreliable Narration: Studien zur Theorie und Praxis unglaubwürdigen Erzählens in der englischsprachigen Literatur. Trier: WVT.

Picard, Hans Rudolf (1987). Der Geist der Erzählung: Dargestelltes Erzählen in literarischer Tradition. Bern: Lang.

Ryan, Marie-Laure (2004). “Metaleptic Machines”. Semiotica 150 1/4: 439-469.

Seager, Dennis L. (1991). Stories Within Stories: An Ecosystemic Theory of Metadiegetic Narrative. New York, NY: Lang.

Shelley, Mary (1818/1968). Frankenstein. Peter Fairclough, ed. Three Gothic Novels. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 257-497.

Shryock, Richard (1993). Tales of Storytelling: Embedded Narrative in Modern French Fiction. New York, NY: Lang.

Stratmann, Gerrit (2000). Rahmenerzählungen der Moderne: Situation und Gestaltung einer Erzählform zwischen 1883 und 1928. Marburg: Tectum.

Williams, Jeffrey (1998). Theory and the Novel: Narrative Reflexivity in the British Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Wolf, Werner (1993). Ästhetische Illusion und Illusionsdurchbre-chung in der Erzählkunst. Theorie und Geschichte mit Schwer-punkt auf englischem illusionsstörenden Erzählen. Buchreihe der Anglia 32. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

— (1999). “Framing Fiction. Reflections on a Narratological Concept and an Example: Bradbury, Mensonge”. Walter Grünzweig, An-dreas Solbach, eds. Grenzüberschreitungen: Narratologie im Kon-text/Transcending Boundaries: Narratology in Context. Tübingen: Narr. 97-124.

— (2000). “Multiperspektivität: Das Konzept und seine Applikations-möglichkeit auf Rahmungen in Erzählwerken”. Ansgar and Vera Nünning, eds. Multiperspektivisches Erzählen: Zur Theorie und Geschichte der Perspektivenstruktur im englischen Roman des 18. bis 20. Jahrhunderts. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. 79-109.

— (2001). “Formen literarischer Selbstreferenz in der Erzählkunst: Versuch einer Typologie und ein Exkurs zur ‘mise en cadre’ und ‘mise en reflet/série’”. Jörg Helbig, ed. Erzählen und Erzähltheorie

206 Werner Wolf

im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert. Festschrift für Wilhelm Füger.Heidelberg: Winter. 49-84.

— (2004). “Aesthetic Illusion as an Effect of Fiction”. Style 38: 325-351.

— (2005). “Rahmenerzählung”. Gert Ueding, ed. Historisches Wör-terbuch der Rhetorik. Vol. 7. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 560-566.

Found(ed) in a Picture

Ekphrastic Framing in Ancient, Medieval,

and Contemporary Literature

Haiko Wandhoff

This paper focuses on verbally rendered pictures found in initial positions of narrative texts. This poetic technique of Bildeinsatz, as it was called by the classicist Schissel von Fleschenberg, sets up a work of verbal art by describing a painted, sculpted or even architectural monument. As a certain kind of initial mise en abyme ekphrases in initial position often provide the reader with a summary or even a moralizing allegory of the story to follow. In this respect they create certain structures of expectation, whilst at the same time marking the border between the framing (picture) and the framed (story) by announcing the boundary between the visual and the verbal modes of representation. These initial ek-phrastic frames will be interpreted as “cognitive fictions” (Mary Carruthers), addressing the memory of the reader with an elementary foundation of what follows and providing her/him with a visual ‘map’ as a cognitive tool to navigate through the text proper.

Prologue

Don DeLillo’s novel Underworld begins with a “Prologue” called “The Triumph of Death” (1997: 9)1. This title, which occurs right at the beginning of the text, seems enigmatic, because in the prologue the author tells a story about a famous baseball game in 1951 between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan. The story starts with the black boy Cotter Martin sneaking his way into the stadium, jumping over the turnstiles and hiding from the cops. Later we learn that there are celebrities such as Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason and J. Edgar Hoover in the stadium,

1 For criticism and comments upon this paper I am indebted to Kathryn Starkey (Chapel Hill) and Jörn Münkner (Berlin).

208 Haiko Wandhoff

too. The game ends with Bobby Thomson’s epochal home run into the stands of the Polo Grounds that gave the Giants the pennant.

Our passage into the novel, into the ‘Underworld’, so to speak, leads us through a baseball stadium, a modern version of the ancient amphitheatre, where we not only find the crucial elements of the nar-ration to follow but also the prologue’s title and its meaning. When the game has reached its climax, the prologue’s title literally falls from the sky, for it is painted on a piece of paper that lands in the stadium’s stands. It is one of many pieces of paper that the baseball fans throw onto the field. Simultaneously – and immediately before the final home run – the notorious FBI director J. Edgar Hoover receives the message that the Soviet Union has successfully detonated an atom bomb. Back at his seat, he is suddenly bombarded with ominous confetti: Hoover grabs a big sheet of paper that lands on his shoulder. It has been torn out of Life magazine and shows the “Triumph of Death”, the famous apocalyptic painting by Pieter Brueghel from approximately 15622.

At first he’s annoyed that the object has come in contact with his body. Then his eyes fall upon the page. It is a color reproduction of a painting crowded with me-dieval figures who are dying or dead – a landscape of havoc and ruin. Edgar has never seen a painting quite like this. It covers the page completely and must surely dominate the magazine. Across the red-brown earth, skeleton armies on the march. Men impaled on lances, hung from gibbets, drawn on spoked wheels fixed to the tops of bare trees, bodies upon the crows. Legions of the dead forming up behind shields made of coffin lids. Death himself astride a slat-ribbed hack, he is peaked for blood, his scythe held ready as he presses people in haunted swarms toward the entrance of some helltrap, an oddly modern construction that could be a subway tunnel or office corridor. A background of ash skies and burning ships. It is clear to Edgar that the page is from Life and he tries to work up an anger, he asks himself why a magazine called Life would want to reproduce a painting of such lurid and dreadful dimensions. But he can’t take his eyes off the page. (DeLillo 1997: 41)

2 The Brueghel painting did appear “in the October 1, 1951 issue of Life magazine, pages 66-67, in a story on the Prado museum” (Underworld 2004: 2). After the pro-logue’s title, however, the title of the painting is not mentioned in DeLillo’s novel again. We only get a vivid description of the painting.

Ekphrastic Framing in Literature 209

Still shocked by the message about the Russian bomb and thinking back to Pearl Harbor exactly ten years ago, Hoover is fascinated by this allegorical “Triumph of Death” that falls from the sky – almost simultaneously with Thomson’s “Shot heard ‘round the World”, as his famous home run will later be called (see Underworld 2004: 1).

DeLillo’s prologue is a fascinating example of paratextual initial framing, which illustrates the tendency of postmodernist fiction to play with frames and framing borders. In this respect, there are two levels on which the framing prologue of Underworld is connected with the framed text, a syntagmatic and a paradigmatic level. The syntagmatic level, operating on the narrative’s surface, is created by the ball as the third ballistic object falling from the sky (in addition to atom bombs and confetti). Thomson hits it into the stands of the sta-dium, where Cotter catches it and takes it home. But then the ball gets lost and wanders from hand to hand, until it reaches Nick Shay, the novel’s male protagonist, who owns the ball in the 1990s and tries to trace its odyssey back to the 1950s. The ball can be seen as the “memoria rerum” (Carruthers 1998: 199) of the text, the significant ‘thing’ that holds its different parts together. The ball, then, is not only hit from the Polo Grounds into New York but also from the framing paratext into the text proper.

On a second, paradigmatic level of signification, however, it is the baseball stadium that not only ‘contains’ the prologue, the ‘small‘ narration preceding the narration proper, but also the main themes of the text to follow. In this paratextual ‘entrance hall’ to the Underworld

the motives and oppositions that constitute the dark, bizarre and apocalyptic novel appear in a condensed and almost allegorical form: life and death, death and art, black and white, Dodgers and Giants, the U. S. and the Soviet Union. And in the centre of this microcosm, we catch a glimpse of the apocalyptic picture that constitutes the novel’s leitmotif: the triumph of death over life in the U. S. between the 1950s and the 1990s, the threat of death that falls from the sky and the at-tempts to contain it. In the novel these attempts include the art of

210 Haiko Wandhoff

Nick’s former lover, Klara Sax, who transforms junked B-52 bombers into a gigantic art installation in the desert, and Nick’s efforts, as a waste containment company’s manager, to find a good place to con-tain the atomic fallout produced by the bombs.

Thus, what we have here is a fascinating combination of two forms

of initial (textual) framing, that is paratextual and ekphrastic fram-ing. The triumph of death, the leitmotif of the entire novel, is reflected in the prologue’s title, which again has been derived from the Brue-ghel painting described in the prologue. In this way DeLillo combines an ‘introductory text’ (the prologue) with an ‘introductory picture‘ (the ekphrasis of the “Triumph of Death”) and executes a kind of initial framing that Werner Wolf has called (in contrast to Gide’s mise

en abyme) mise en cadre: that is

the anticipatory illustration of elements of the framed text in the framing, a device which in some cases not only points to the framed text, but may also underline the importance of framing as such (Wolf 1999: 104)3.

1. The Poetic Technique of Bildeinsatz

In the present paper, I focus on ekphrases found in the initial position of narrative texts. While the prologue is a classical topos of mise en

cadre, the device of ekphrasis is not restricted to initial position. From antiquity on, art descriptions can be found anywhere in epics and novels, often working as a mise en abyme, mirroring elements or structures of the narration in a visual work of art described in the text. This is the case in DeLillo’s Underworld, too. In the middle of the novel the characters watch a long lost and rather mysterious film by Sergeij Eisenstein, another dark, surrealistic, and visually encoded ‘triumph of death’ called “Unterwelt”, which is the German word for ‘Underworld’ (cf. DeLillo 1997: 431). While the Brueghel painting, as

3 Wolf 1999: 104, footnote 28, defines mise en cadre “as the opposite of the mise en abyme: while the latter is characterized by the ‘homologous reduplication of a textual structure or element on a lower level’ [...], mise en cadre is the homologous reduplication of a textual structure or element on a higher textual level: the framing”.


an initial mise en cadre, provides the title for the prologue, the Eisenstein film, as a mise en abyme, creates the title for the entire novel. Both descriptions of visual art perform a certain kind of fram-ing, insofar as they remind the reader of the overall theme of the long and complex novel. However, contrary to the mise en abyme mode, ekphrases in initial position, as I argue here, share particular cognitive implications: they offer the reader a visual ‘map’, an easily compre-hensible spatial form as a foundation for mental image making during his/her tour through the text that follows.

Crucial to all forms of ekphrastic framing is the sudden change of the representational mode, a switch from listening to seeing and vice

versa. Mostly after a short introduction or prologue, the reader gets

something important to see, before s/he is prepared to listen to the text that follows. In this respect there is a similarity to forms of intermedial framing, for instance, when paintings on the cover or dust jacket indicate, and frame, the verbally encoded content of a book in another

medium4. Ekphrastic framing, in contrast to intermedial (or heteromedial) framing in a narrower sense, however, works with pic-tures not physically painted on the page or on the cover of the book, but created verbally within the text. It consists of word-image hybrids, “verbal representations of visual representation” (Heffernan 1993: 3) that are painted before our inner eye and provide a visual-spatial ground for the time-bound narrative to follow. Similar to the interme-dial framing of cover paintings and other forms of book illustration, ekphrastic framing, too, works with a fundamental boundary between the verbal and the visual and thus provides distinct representational borders between the framing and the framed.

When in 1913 the classicist O. Schissel von Fleschenberg pointed out that in ancient and late antique epics, epyllions, and romances there can often be found ekphrases and other forms of verbal pictures in initial position, he called this device “die Technik des Bildein- 4 A brief survey on the concepts of intermediality can be found in Schröter 1998. Cf. also Wagner, ed. 1996, Helbig, ed. 1998 and Rajewski 2002.

212 Haiko Wandhoff

satzes” (Schissel von Fleschenberg 1913). In his opinion, the aim of Bildeinsatz is “eine aus der Bildbetrachtung abgezogene allgemeine Sentenz dem Text als führende Idee vorwegzuschicken“ (ibid.: 83). In other words, to provide the narrative text with a moralising maxim or theme that is encapsulated in a picture and put before the reader’s inner eye before the narrative proper starts. Therefore, contrary to ekphrases in general, in

the ‘Bildeinsatz’ technique the description is not digressive but proleptic – the painting described, often a moralizing allegory, introduces the plot, theme or moral of the story or discourse to follow (Keuls 1978: 121-122).

Recently, Mary Carruthers has stressed the cognitive function of intro-ductory pictures or Bildeinsätze for the reader and implicitly under-lined the function of these pictures as a means of initial framing.

Bildeinsatz starts off a work by addressing the memory of both the fictional onlooker and the reader/hearer with a summary of the principal ‘matters’ of the work to follow, seen as a set of painted or sculpted, embroidered or mosaic im-ages. (Carruthers 1998: 197)

Before the narrative proper begins, the readers get a kind of visual ‘map’ of the narration that is imprinted on their minds to help them navigate through the linear and often complex flow of the text. These mental images act, in Carruthers’s words,

as the elementary foundation, the dispositio of what follows. Introductory rhetori-cal pictures serve as orienting maps and summaries of the matters which are de-veloped within the work. They provide its memoria rerum. (Ibid.: 199)

2. Aeneas’ Encounter with the Past: an Introductory

Picture of the Trojan War in Virgil’s Aeneid

Perhaps the most important Western text that presents us with a per-vasive model of initial ekphrastic framing is Virgil’s Aeneid (1969). With the story of the Trojan fugitive Aeneas, who settles in Italy in order to found a new Troy, which later is to become Rome, Virgil en-dows the Augustan Empire with a far reaching historical fundament. The reader encounters this very foundation in a mural picture de-scribed at the beginning of the text. In the first book, when Aeneas after a seven-year odyssey accidentally arrives in Carthage, he dis-


covers a marvelous temple dedicated to the goddess Juno. To his great surprise, on the walls of this building he finds a pictorial narrative of the Trojan War:

[...] videt Iliacas ex ordine pugnas bellaque iam fata totum vulgata per orbem, Atridas Priamumque et saevum ambobus Achillem. (Vergil 1969: I, 456-458)5

What he sees in these pictures is his own struggle in the past, the dy-ing and suffering of his friends and relatives, and the destruction of his home. Now, seven years later, this story has already become a famous part of world history: “iam fata totum vulgata per orbem”. When he meets Dido, the empress of Carthage, a short time later he gets a warm welcome because she recognizes him as a Trojan Lord, a famous protagonist in the historical event celebrated in her temple paintings. Stimulated by these pictures that obviously activate his memory, Aeneas recounts the story of the Trojan War to Dido from his perspective. His autobiographical narration, filling the entire second book of the epic, can be regarded as an ‘embedded narrative’ or a ‘paranarrative’ that is closely linked to the ekphrastic framing and that creates certain structures of expectation, too6.

In these paintings Aeneas not only meets his dead relatives and friends but also himself fighting against the Greeks. In other words, he finds his former self in the wall paintings in which he now has become part of a memorial work of art. While Aeneas is concerned with his Trojan memories, for the readers in the Augustan age, on the contrary, the same pictures provide a perspective on their own political history.

5 “[...] he suddenly saw, laid out in order, depictions of the battles fought at Troy. The Trojan War was already famous throughout the world. The two sons of Atreus were there, and Priam, and Achilles who hated both sides.” (Virgil 1991: 18) See Wandhoff 2003: 188-190, 231-233.

6 The correspondence between ekphrases and ‘embedded narratives’ in ancient and medieval literature is discussed in several essays in Haferland/Mecklenburg, eds. 1996, and the persistence of storytelling in ekphrastic literature is underlined by Hef-fernan 1993, 113: “Traditionally [...] ekphrasis is dynamic and obstetric, delivering from the pregnant moment of visual art the extended narrative which it embryonically signifies”.

214 Haiko Wandhoff

For the Trojan War in Virgil’s Aeneid not only creates a fictional background for the personal fate of the protagonist, but at the same time represents “a heroic past of mythological scope” (Patterson 1987, 161). The Trojan civilization is portrayed as an ancient prototype of the Roman empire, “a secure foundation upon which the future can be built, a glorious and heroic time that the present simultaneously reconstitutes and passes on” (Patterson 1987: 161).

However, in addition to these personal and imperial trajectories or continuations, there is a third level of initial framing that triggers an

intertextual reference. For what the audience sees through Aeneas’s tear-stained eyes on the painted wall is Homer’s famous epic, the Iliad, transformed into a visual work of art. Virgil’s Aeneid is gener-ally regarded as a very close adaptation of Homer’s Greek epics; the Odyssey is reworked in the first six books and the Iliad in the last six books. Virgil’s aim was to rebuild the great monuments of Greek mythology in a master work of Roman history; he does this almost without creating any new elements. All of his major figures and epi-sodes have their prototypes in Homer’s works, and some of them are found in the initial ekphrasis to build up intertextual structures of expectation. As Putnam and other scholars have pointed out, it is es-pecially Achilles and Penthesilea who appear in the painted narrative of the Trojan War, hinting at the story to follow, namely the love af-fair between Aeneas and Dido. The initial ekphrasis, according to Putnam,

reaches out in anticipation to what follows, to become ‘enlivened’ in two signifi-cant ways, through the association of Dido with Penthesilea and of Aeneas with Achilles, and through Aeneas’ narration, which picks up the tale of Troy’s fate (Putnam 1998: 41)7.

7 Cf. Putnam 1998: 158, Carruthers 1998: 196-197, and Keuls 1978: 133. A Bildeinsatz similar to Virgil’s pictures of the Trojan War can be found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (II, 5-18). At the beginning of the second book, Ovid gives a descrip-tion of the iron entrance doors (!) of Sol’s divine palace, which are decorated with manifold pictures representing the entire universe.


However, in Aeneas’ narration, Virgil even provides insight in the ancient concept of visual cognitive framing as such. Only after his emotional encounter with the spatial work of art is Aeneas able to retrieve the story of his own past from his memory and explain it to Dido.

His memory process is prickled by the act of weeping, and this in turn enables him to recollect, and, recollecting, to let his soul graze and then, after inventing and composing here, to tell his story to Dido later at the material feast. (Carruthers 1998: 196)

By showing that gazing at a painted work of art sets in motion the process of remembrance and the task of rhetorical composition, the text highlights the cognitive aspects of visual framing and emphasizes the usefulness of pictures as mental frames. In the Aeneid Virgil thus implicitly offers us a meta-fictional theory of ekphrastic framing, of the technique of Bildeinsatz, a theory that is well known in the Middle Ages, too.

3. Visual ‘Map’ and Verbal ‘Tour’: the Reader’s

Navigation Through Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature

A fascinating medieval example of the Bildeinsatz technique is appar-ent in The Plaint of Nature, an influential twelfth-century allegorical Latin epic by Alan of Lille. The main parts of the text contain a rather philosophical debate about the decline of mankind and the degenera-tion of man. Yet several poetic strategies make these philosophical themes readily comprehensible: first, Alan presents the debate as an allegorical scene in which Lady Nature and her relatives, the virtues, are actors; second, this allegorical debate takes the form of a dream vision seen by the author, as it does in Boethius’s The Consolation of

Philosophy8; third, and most important for my purpose, the text starts with a lengthy and detailed description of Lady Nature’s beautiful

8 For further examples see Carruthers 1998: 197: “In several texts, a compositional pictura takes the form of a vision seen by the author, as it does in The Consolation of Philosophy.”

216 Haiko Wandhoff

body, clothing, and shiny gemstones. Her splendid appearance is a visual-spatial representation of nature. The description starts off with the stars on her crown and the diadem on her head, then moves to her beautiful face, where tears are running down her cheeks, to be fol-lowed by her different layers of clothing depicting all the animals of the water, the air and the earth. On her shoes, finally, we see plants and flowers. Last but not least, man is depicted on the linen tunic representing the earth. Only this part of her clothing is corrupted and damaged while the pictures of the animals and plants shine brightly as if they were alive:

In huius uestis parte primaria homo, sensualitatis deponens segniciem, directa ratiocinationis aurigatione, celi penetrabant archana. In qua parte tunica, sua-rum partium passa dissidum, suarum iniuriarum contumelias demonstrabat. In reliquis tamen locis partes eleganti continuatione concordes, nullam diuisionis in se sustinebant discordiam. In quibus quedam picture incantatio terrestria anima-lia uiuere faciebat. (Alanus ab Insulis 1978: II, 232-238)9

The initial ekphrasis shows Nature in her actual state of being, cor-rupted and damaged by man, transformed into a weeping human body. It provides a living picture of the precarious status quo, to be dis-cussed and improved in and by the text proper; a highly visual revela-tion, shiny, bright and constantly in motion, like a dramatic play: “Has animalibus figuras hystrionalis figure representatio, quasi iocunditatis conuiuia, oculis donabat uidentium” (Alanus ab Insulis 1978: II, 279-280)10. In this sense, as a reminder of the protagonist’s poor status

quo, the portrayal of Lady Nature is similar to the pictorial self-reflection of the fugitive Aeneas, washed ashore at Carthage. Also, in

9 “On the first section of this garment, man, divesting himself of the indolence of self-indulgence, tried to run a straight course through the secrets of the heavens with reason as charioteer. In this section, the tunic had suffered a rending of its parts and showed the effect of injuries and insults. In other sections, however, the parts had sustained no injury from division or discord in the beautiful harmony of their unbro-ken surface. In these a kind of magic picture made land animals come alive.” (Alan of Lille 1980: 98-99)

10 “A representation akin to a stage production, offered these representations of animals as a delightful feast, so to speak, for the eyes of the beholders.” (Alan of Lille 1980: 104)


both narratives, the Aeneid as well as The Plaint of Nature, the text proper eventually will have overcome the former state of things shown by the initial picture.

Since the following passages of the Planctus consist of long dis-courses and disputations between Lady Nature and the Virtues about the construction of a new man, a homo novus, Alan’s text is a good example of the use of Bildeinsatz as a kind of visual ‘map’ for the reader: a cognitive tool that helps her/him to navigate through the philosophical dialogues to follow. In medieval monastic idiom, the Latin word pictura “is commonly used also as a synonym of mappa, ‘map’” (Carruthers 1998: 197), and in cognitive theory and linguistics the terms ‘map’ and ‘tour’ were introduced to distinguish two differ-ent but intersecting concepts of representing space and attaining knowledge (see Downs/Stea 1973; Linde/Labov 1975; de Certeau 1988: 220-226; Janzen 2000). In this context, the ‘map’-mode pro-vides an overview of a spatial unit, a ‘bird’s-eye view’ (“Überblicks-wissen”), in which the single elements are seen almost simultaneously. The ‘ground-based view’ of the tour (“Routenwissen”), on the other hand, requires time and movement, it provides navigation through elements which are presented in chronological order (see Janzen 2000: 11-12). In everyday speech, as linguistic research has shown, the imaginary ‘tour’ seems to be far more frequent than the ‘map’ to attain and represent knowledge (cf. Linde/Labov 1975).

In the Bildeinsatz technique, and especially here in Alan’s Planc-

tus, we find these two cognitive modes in close cooperation. If a ‘mental map’ is used in everyday communication, it is for the most parts the result of many ‘tours’, showing the same paths from different perspectives (cf. Janzen 2000: 16-19). In the pictorial framing of the Bildeinsatz technique, however, this relationship is reversed. First, a three-dimensional, highly visual and moving picture provides an overview from a distant vantage point over the matters to be learned. Next, this picture leads to a set of verbal disputations. Presented in initial position, the picture serves as a spatial form to be implemented

218 Haiko Wandhoff

on the reader’s mind in order to instruct and guide his/her following ‘walk’ through the often long and complex dialogues of the text proper. In the Planctus, Alan first presents the main theme of the nar-rative, the corruption of Nature by mankind in an all-encompassing picture and only then introduces his protagonists, who discuss her attempt to build a new, better man in detail. Once readers imprint the ‘map’ of Nature’s human body on their minds, they will be able to locate and retrieve the philosophical meanings encoded in the differ-ent parts of the body scheme. Whenever they lose orientation, the readers can switch from the ‘tour’ mode to the ‘map’ mode and in their minds have a look at Lady Nature again.

As Rudolf Krayer writes:

Alles, was Natura an Gewändern und Schmuck auf ihrem Leib trägt, was sie tut und spricht, läßt sich in Bedeutungen auflösen, und doch geht die figürliche Ein-heit nicht verloren. Im Duft des Geheimnisses, das ihr die menschliche Gestalt verleiht, tritt sie vor das Auge des Geistes. (Krayer 1960: 38)11

4. A ‘Map’ of the Protagonist’s Mind: Ekphrastic

Framing in Wernher der Gartenaere’s Helmbrecht

Let us now look at another medieval text, the late-thirteenth-century Middle High German short epic Helmbrecht. Similar to Alan’s Plaint

of Nature, it sets out with over a hundred lines of description of the protagonist’s garments that include a marvelous cap on which several splendid images are stitched. Likewise, it is said to be a kind of vision seen by the author himself: ‘I saw, and this is nothing but the truth, the son of a peasant, who had curly and blond hair. In its full length it

11 ‘All the clothing and jewelry that Lady Nature wears on her body, and everything that she says and does carries meaning, and yet her figurative unity remains intact. Surrounded by the mystery that lends her her human form, she appears before the reader’s inner eye.’


reached over his shoulders. He wrapped it in a cap, which was deco-rated with pictures.’ (Wernher der Gartenaere 1972: ll. 9-15)12

This young peasant named Helmbrecht wants to leave his origins behind, aspiring instead to the chivalric culture of knighthood. Since his social background does not permit such an ambitious career move, he joins a gang of outlaws, who roam the country robbing and killing. Eventually, Helmbrecht has to pay the price for his criminal deeds resulting from his rebellion against the divine social ordo. He is exe-cuted towards the end of the poem and his beautiful cap, which was made by a merry nun who had left her nunnery, is torn into pieces.

Central to the protagonist’s initial description is the ekphrasis of the cap. Similar to his long and curly hair which usurp a fashion that in the Middle Ages was restricted to aristocrats, the pictures on the cap indicate the protagonist’s false ambitions as well. They include three main sections showing different topics. In the middle section, “hinden von dem spâne / nâch der scheitel gegen dem schopfe / reht enmitten ûf dem kopfe” (‘from the curls behind to the locks of his brow, right in the middle of his head’) there is a band covered with birds “reht als sie waeren dar geflogen / ûz dem Spehtharte” (‘as if they have just arrived from the Spessart’) (Wernher der Gartenaere 1972: ll. 32-37). The back of the cap depicts three different historical themes: on the right side there are images showing the Trojan War and the destruction of Troy; the left side is adorned with pictures connected to the Song of Roland, depicting Charlemagne, Roland, Turpin and Olivier fighting the pagans in France and Spain; and the middle section is devoted to episodes of the Dietrich von Bern cycle, showing the death of Lady Helche’s presumptuous sons in the battle of Ra-venna (cf. ibid.: ll. 45-84). Last but not least, the front section of the cap exhibits scenes from a courtly feast with dancing knights and ladies (ibid.: ll. 85-103).

12 My translation. (“Ich sach, daz ist sicherlîchen wâr, / eines gebûren sun, der truoc ein hâr, / daz was reide unde val. / ob der ahsel hin ze tal / mit lenge ez volleclîchen gie. / in ein hûben er ez vie / diu was von bilden waehe.”)

220 Haiko Wandhoff

Wernher der Gartenaere, the author of this epic, is obviously fa-miliar with the ancient tradition of ekphrasis. Helmbrecht’s knightly garment and especially his cap adorned with pictures from chivalric life make his social ambitions visible on the surface of his body. The cap resembles, for example, Aeneas’s shield, which contains a series of pictures in which the Trojan fugitive’s historical mission is exhibited. However, the allegorical clothing of Alan’s Lady Nature also seems to be reworked in Wernher’s Bildeinsatz. Similar to Nature’s sad condition that can be seen on the garments of her body right at the beginning of Alan’s poem, Helmbrecht’s amazing outer appearance also points to a human revolt against the divine ordo. Described in detail from his head to his toes, the three-dimensional form of his marvelously decorated body – like Lady Nature – acts as a visual-spatial ‘map’ of the topics and themes to follow in the text proper.

However, there is at least one fascinating new element in Helm-

brecht, for the initial ekphrastic ‘mapping’ seems to go even ‘deeper’ (in the word’s true sense) in this case. As Mario Klarer has convinc-ingly shown, the cap “as an exterior wrapper of the human head” in this text quite literally “serves as a screen to project the workings of Helmbrecht’s mind”. Klarer argues that “Helmbrecht’s cap functions like a two-dimensional X-ray image, permitting us to see into the head”, by linking the places of the pictures on the cap with the notions of contemporary brain anatomy.

The positions of the three major sets of pictures on Helmbrecht’s cap roughly co-incide with the locations of the three brain cells in medieval anatomy. [...] the ek-phrasis of the images on the cap spells out a literary map of the human mind. (Klarer 1999: 37)

Accordingly, the back section of the cap with its three famous histori-cal subjects taken from chivalric cultural memory represents the cell of memoria. The front section with knights and ladies dancing in a courtly fashion allows insight into Helmbrecht’s cell of imagination (imaginatio) in that it exhibits where and what he wants to be in the future. The middle section, covered with birds, represents the cell of


rational thought (ratio or cognitiva). Since birds are commonly understood as indicators of irrational thought, as Klarer argues, their representation on this part of the cap suggests that Helmbrecht’s mind is not working properly.

The second cell, cognitiva, projects inappropriate notions of knighthood into Helmbrecht’s imagination. Where the middle cell should control the exchange be-tween the cell of memory and imagination, Helmbrecht has ‘birds’, i.e. irrational thought, which results in his misinterpretation of the cultural tradition or memory. (Ibid.)

As a consequence of the malfunction of his cell of rational thought, Helmbrecht above all fails to notice the tragic aspect that all three historical subjects in his memory have in common: their association with arrogance and presumption resulting in death and destruction.

If Klarer’s interpretation is correct, the introductory ekphrastic pic-ture in Helmbrecht can be seen as a strong cognitive frame for navi-gating the reader through the narration. By showing the workings of Helmbrecht’s mind, the Bildeinsatz provides us with a detailed ‘ment-al map’ of the protagonist, which serves as a tool for the reader to interpret the protagonist’s deeds in the following narration, where the foolish peasant becomes a criminal outlaw. As the malfunction of his brain obviously results in the ‘malfunction’ of his behavior and finally causes his death (as well as the destruction of the cap), everybody hearing or reading the text is addressed to take care of the images he has in mind. Since the cap, as the memoria rerum of the epic, is mentioned time and again, the readers are constantly reminded of the initial picture throughout their ‘tour’ in the narration. They are never allowed to forget about Helmbrecht’s ‘mental map’ which is respons-ible for the protagonist’s decline.

Conclusion

In this paper, I tried to trace back the long tradition of initial ekphras-tic framing from DeLillo’s Underworld through the Middle Ages to the ancient art of narration. Time and again, pictures have been transformed into verbal images that offer the reader a visual ‘map’, an

222 Haiko Wandhoff

easily comprehensible spatial form as a foundation for mental image-making during her/his ‘tour’ through the text to follow. While in contemporary prose fiction the Bildeinsatz technique seems to be above all a poetic showpiece, in ancient and medieval literature it is closely connected to psychological and even anatomical beliefs because “Bildeinsätze have the rhetorical quality called enargeia” (Carruthers 1998: 199). Virgil’s depiction of Aeneas, who is able to tell his own story of the Trojan War only after he is stimulated by a picture, sheds light on what was common opinion throughout the pre-modern cultures of the West: namely that images participate in the rhetorical quality of enargeia and share “the vividness of existing things” (Steiner 1982: 10), charged with motion and emotion. There-fore they cause a stronger effect on memory and cognition than words. While art in general, at least in the Western tradition, “is seen as a mnemonic device meant to produce an absent reality”, poetry, de-prived of sensuousness, “is art at yet a further remove” (Krieger 1992: 159). To transfer this “reality claim of painting” (Steiner 1982: xi) to poetry, then, means to incorporate pictures into verbal works of art, to ‘paint’ with words, but also, and this is not the least important func-tion, to create vivid pictorial frames for narrative texts.

Insofar as he exhibits a cognitive basis for his protagonist’s stupid-ity in the initial description of the cap, Wernher in his Helmbrecht

seems to underline this far-reaching notion of a “visual epistemology” (Krieger 1992: 14). The ekphrastic framing of this text hints at the relevance of visual frames in cognition by showing that our mind’s processes depend fundamentally on mental images. Our ‘mental map’, that is, the kind of images we have stored in our minds, and the way in which we deal with them in the ‘inner world’ of our brains, is crucial for understanding as well as directing our own behavior. This strong emphasis on the cognitive function of pictures and other visual forms and the notion that mental image-making is a crucial task in cognition


makes apparent how relevant ekphrastic framing in literature is – not only in ancient and medieval narratives13.

Epilogue

While the focus of the present paper was on ekphrastic framing, it is interesting to note that in the era of typographic layout, the verbally rendered images sometimes shift from the text to the paratext and materialize in the title or even on the cover of the book. Especially the invention of the front page in the age of Gutenberg has led to a new attentiveness of the book’s ‘borders’ and surfaces, which ever since have become important framing-sites of literature. Unlike their me-dieval precursors14, modern and postmodern readers have the oppor-tunity to learn the essentials of a book by looking at its cover informa-tion. As an ‘epilogue’ and in addition to DeLillo’s Underworld dis-cussed in my “Prologue” I want to mention two other examples of this tendency of modern ekphrastic frames to shift from intratextual to paratextual or even intermedial framing borders.

Leonardo Sciascia’s Italian novel Il Cavaliere e la Morte begins with a description of Dürer’s famous picture “The Knight, Death, and the Devil” (1516). Hung on the wall in a police office, it is viewed by a detective, who dies at the end of the text that follows. However, when the readers are led through the ekphrasis word by word, they have already seen the picture with their own eyes before, since it is depicted on the dust sleeve of the book – at least in the hardcover edition by Adelphi, Milan (cf. Sciascia 1988). The initial ekphrasis or Bildeinsatz of the Dürer painting, which is connected to the title of the book, too, is now reinforced by an intermedial framing that enables 13 Some further examples are discussed in Wandhoff 2001.

14 In the Middle Ages the art of cover painting or even cover carving was for a long time restricted to ornate religious books containing the Gospels or other biblical texts. Displayed on the book’s ‘edges’ the pictures were meant to expose the splendour of the divine Word that was caught in the book on its surface, too, so that His word could be experienced with all senses and even from a distance, without having access to the book’s verbally encoded content at all.

224 Haiko Wandhoff

the readers to look back at the dust sleeve and see the picture with their own eyes.

A slightly different case is apparent in Alejo Carpentier’s Cuban novel El siglo de las luces (1962), which deals with the era of Enlight-enment and in particular with the arrival of the guillotine on the Carib-bean Islands. In its initial part the text contains a rather short descrip-tion of a picture called “Explosion in a Cathedral”, providing the title for the entire novel when it was translated into English and German a short time later (cf. Carpentier 1963 and 1964). What can be seen here – although in this case as a result of translating a given text into foreign languages – is the same tendency of the ekphrastic image to extend from the text to the paratext which DeLillo performs with the turning of his notional Eisenstein film into the title of his entire novel, Underworld. Hence, in the Anglo-American and German worlds, Carpentier’s novel has only been known as Explosion in a Cathedral, or Explosion in der Kathedrale, respectively. Furthermore, in the Anglo-American edition, this paratextual framing is reinforced by a picture on the book cover showing the entrance door of a building covered by smoke (cf. Carpentier 1963).

While in pre-modern narrative literature initial ekphrases were re-peatedly used to create vivid pictorial frames for verbal works of art, in the visual culture of typographic and computer-based layout and design things have fundamentally changed. Jay David Bolter has re-cently argued that in the age of electronic multimedia communication, the ekphrastic word-image hybrids tend to “jump out of the text” – and onto the surface of the book, as one might add – “in an effort to provide their readers with ‘pure’ visual experiences” (Bolter 1996: 269). Nonetheless, this ‘jumping out of the text’, at least in our examples, does not imply, as Bolter suggests, a change of the medium, an intermedial transformation from the verbal to the visual picture or


photography15. It is rather a case of intermedial reduplication and

reinforcement, for the ekphrases turn into paintings or photographs

on the book’s surfaces and at the same time stay where they were and what they were: pictures painted by words.

References

Alanus ab Insulis (1978). “De Planctu Naturae”. N. M. Häring, ed. Studi Medievali. Terza Serie 19/2: 797-879.

Alan of Lille (1980). The Plaint of Nature. Trans. and Comm. J. J. Sheridan. Medieval Sources in Translation 26. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.

Bolter, Jay David (1996). “Ekphrasis, Virtual Reality, and the Future of Writing”. G. Nunberg, ed. The Future of the Book. Berkeley, CA/Los Angeles, CA: Univ. of California Press. 253-271.

Carpentier, Alejo (1962). El siglo de las luces. Barcelona: Seix Barral. — (1963). Explosion in a Cathedral. Boston, MA: Little Brown. — (1964). Explosion in der Kathedrale. Frankfurt am Main: Insel. Carruthers, Mary (1998). The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric,

and the Making of Images 400-1200. Cambridge Studies in Me-dieval Literature 34. Cambridge: CUP.

Certeau, Michel de (1988). Kunst des Handelns. Berlin: Merve. Dällenbach, Lucien (1977). Le Récit spéculaire: Essai sur la mise en

abyme. Paris: Seuil. DeLillo, Don (1997). Underworld. New York, NY: Scribner. Downs, Roger M., David Stea (1973). Image and Environment: Cog-

nitive Mapping and Spatial Behavior. Chicago, IL: Aldine Pub-lishing.

Haferland, Harald, Michael Mecklenburg, eds. (1996). Erzählungen in Erzählungen: Phänomene der Narration in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Forschungen zur Geschichte der älteren deutschen Literatur 19. Munich: Fink.

Heffernan, James (1993). The Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ek-phrasis from Homer to Ashbury. Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press.

15 “The breakout of the visual in contemporary prose and multimedia is a denial of ekphrasis. Popular prose and multimedia are striving for the natural sign in the realm of the visual rather than through heightened verbal expression.” (Bolter 1996: 265)

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Helbig, Jörg, ed. (1998). Intermedialität: Theorie und Praxis eines interdisziplinären Forschungsgebiets. Berlin: Schmidt.

Janzen, Gabriele (2000). Organisation räumlichen Wissens: Unter-suchungen zur Orts- und Richtungsrepräsentation. Wiesbaden: Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag.

Keuls, Eva (1978). “Rhetoric and Visual Aids in Greece and Rome”. E. A. Havelock, J. P. Hershbell, eds. Communication Arts in the Ancient World. New York, NY: Hastings House. 121-134.

Klarer, Mario (1999). “Ekphrasis, or the Archeology of Historical Theories of Representation: Medieval Brain Anatomy in Wernher der Gartenaere’s Helmbrecht”. Word and Image 15: 34-40.

Krayer, Rudolf (1960). Frauenlob und Naturallegorese: Motiv-geschichtliche Untersuchungen. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des antiken Traditionsgutes. Heidelberg: Winter.

Krieger, Murray (1992). Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.

Linde, Charlotte, William Labov (1975). “Spatial Networks as a Site for the Study of Language and Thought”. Language 51: 924-939.

Patterson, Lee (1987). “Virgil and the Historical Consciousness of the Twelfth Century: The Roman d’Eneas and Erec et Enide”. Negoti-ating the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Litera-ture. Madison, WI: Univ. of Wisconsin Press. 157-195.

Putnam, Michael C. J. (1998). Virgils Epic Designs: Ekphrasis in the Aeneid. New Haven, CT/London: Yale Univ. Press.

Rajewsky, Irina O. (2002). Intermedialität. Tübingen: Francke. Schissel von Fleschenberg, O. (1913). “Die Technik des Bildein-

satzes“. Philologus 76, n. s. 26: 83-114. Schröter, Jens (1998). “Intermedialität: Facetten und Probleme eines

aktuellen medienwissenschaftlichen Begriffs“. montage/av 7: 129-154.

Sciascia, Leonardo (1988). Il Cavaliere e la Morte. Milan: Adelphi. Steiner, Wendy (1982). The Colors of Rhetoric: Problems in the Rela-

tion Between Modern Literature and Painting. Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Underworld (2004). Prologue: The Triumph of Death. http://perival.com/delillo/ underworld_triumph.html (24/04/2004).

Vergil (1969). Aeneid. P. Vergili Maronis Opera. R. A. B. Mynors, ed. Oxford: OUP. 103-422.

— (1991). The Aeneid. A New Prose Translation by David West. London: Penguin.


Wagner, Peter, ed. (1996). Icons – Texts – Iconotexts: Essays on Ek-phrasis and Intermediality. Berlin/New York, NY: de Gruyter.

Wandhoff, Haiko (2001). “Ekphrasis: Bildbeschreibungen von der Antike bis in die Gegenwart”. Horst Wenzel, Wilfried Seipel, Gott-hart Wunberg, eds. Audiovisualität vor und nach Gutenberg: Zur Kulturgeschichte der medialen Umbrüche. Schriften des Kunst-historischen Museums 6. Vienna/Milan: Skira. 175-184.

— (2003). Ekphrasis: Kunstbeschreibungen und virtuelle Räume in der Literatur des Mittelalters. Berlin/New York, NY: de Gruyter.

Wernher der Gartenaere (1972). Helmbrecht. Middle High German Text and Translation into Contemporary German. H. Brackert, W. Frey, D. Seitz, ed. and transl. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer.

Wolf, Werner (1999). “Framing Fiction. Reflections on a Narra-tological Concept and an Example: Bradbury, Mensonge”. Walter Grünzweig, Andreas Solbach, eds. Transcending Boundaries: Nar-ratology in Context. Tübingen: Narr. 97-124.


Frame Analysis and Its Contribution to a Historical and Cultural Theory

of Literary Fiction A Comparison of Initial Framings

in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy and Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans1

Christian Quendler

Due to their liminal positions at the threshold of fiction, initial framings offer a rewarding field of research to study narrative fiction in its cultural and historical context. This paper sets out to illustrate how analyzing initial framings in novels can contribute to an approach to literature that attempts “to cross the border be-tween textual formalism and historical contextualism” (Nünning 2000: 359). To achieve this fusion I propose to distinguish between a communicative and a presentational level of the novelistic frame. In a contrastive analysis of two historical case studies – James Fenimore Cooper’s foundational romance The Spy (1821) and Gertrude Stein’s modernist epic The Making of Americans (1925/ 1934) – I will examine how the emphatic alignment with these two levels in intratextual and paratextual framings as well as non-verbal framings that relate to graphic and material aspects of the book indicate specific historical, cultural, and aesthetic functions of novelistic fiction.

1. Setting the Novelistic Frame

In the last two decades studies in narrative fiction have created an enormous interest in historical and cultural approaches. While advo-cates of historical and context-sensitive approaches tended to situate themselves in opposition to text-centered ones, Ansgar Nünning has recently outlined an integrative position. In his prolegomenon to a “cultural and historical narratology” he proposes “to cross the border 1 I would like to thank Sonja Bahn (Innsbruck) and Mario Klarer (Innsbruck) for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. I am also very grateful to Elizabeth Hsinyin Lee (York) for her valuable suggestions on looking and reading ‘at’ The Making of Americans.

230 Christian Quendler

between textual formalism and historical contextualism” (2000: 359) by studying the historical function of narrative forms.

In this paper I would like to put Nünning’s paramount claim to the test by using initial framings that occur in the paratexts and at the beginning of novels as indications of specific historical functions of novelistic fiction. As Susan Sniader Lanser’s (1981) and Gérard Ge-nette’s (1987) contributions to a theory of initial literary framings have emphasized, their liminal position at the threshold of fiction make them particularly susceptible to studying transactions between text and cultural context. Setting the heuristic value of framings for such a pragmatics of fiction in a historical perspective, this paper attempts to contribute to what Wolf has described as a largely uncov-ered field: namely, a diachronic study of “the functional importance of framings in the interrelation between text, reader and cultural context” (Wolf 1999: 112).

Following the frame theoretical approach that introduces this vo-lume, framings are defined here functionally as signals of the premise system (cf. Bateson 1955/2000) that informs and modifies the context in which meaning is produced. Methodologically, this central concern of frame analysis to give more detail to the notion of context and to explicate premises that shape the content and mode of our experience makes it highly useful for context-sensitive approaches of studying literature.

It is worth mentioning that, although from its inception in the field of anthropology and sociology the historical paradigm featured pro-minently in this endeavor, more recent frame analytical approaches in the collaborative field of cognitive sciences show a markedly syn-chronic focus. The pioneering works of Gregory Bateson and Erving Goffman were not only replete with historical references; more im-portantly, in their research diachronicity often served as a heuristic device of explication. Put in gestalt psychological terms, the diachro-nic level today becomes a contrastive ground that gives contour to the cultural and historical variability of forms and their functions.

Initial Framings in J. F. Cooper and G. Stein 231

In order to illustrate how changes in initial framings can illuminate the historical variability of literary conceptions of fiction, I will com-pare framings in two novels that mark, historically and aesthetically, two extreme poles in the history of the American novel: James Feni-more Cooper’s foundational romance The Spy (1821) and Gertrude Stein’s modernist epic The Making of Americans (1925 and 1934). To elucidate the specific historical conceptions of fiction underpinning these two novels, I will focus on two central functions of initial fram-ings: namely, contextualizing the work and mediating the narrative fiction. On the one hand, I will examine the particular ways in which framings align the novels with literary and extra-literary frames of reference; on the other hand, I will study how framings mediate be-tween what I would like to refer to as the communicative and presentational dimensions of the novels.

Drawing on Niklas Luhmann’s (1995) distinction between com-munication and perception, one can conceive of two basic levels that are constitutive of the novelistic frame as a complexly shaped ex-perience that typically involves emergent levels of reality: an overall communicative level, in the light of which the novel represents a social practice of cultural communication, and a presentational level on which the novel serves as a vehicle of imaginary perception.

Illustration 1: Basic levels of the novelistic frame

On the one hand, the novel partakes in a communication circuit that involves (among other intermediary and collaborative agencies)


author, publisher, bookseller, and readers (cf. Darnton 1989). On the other hand, the reception of literary fiction is a highly individual ex-perience and typically involves a low degree of pragmatic constraints. The imaginative and emotional content that readers invest in redupli-cating and visualizing certain aspects of a story is idiosyncratic and largely incommunicable (cf. Luhmann 1995: 187). This imaginative license and the fact that there is no immediate necessity to continue the literary communication contribute to the recreational effect of reading fiction.

The interaction and entanglement of these two levels result in the paradox that fiction appears to be at once communicated intuition and intuited communication. This duplicity lies at the core of fictional games, which Wolfgang Iser describes as the simultaneity of a speech act and the staging of the same (cf. 1991: 430). Resolving this in favor of either its communicative or its presentational dimension inevitably terminates the fictional game: in the first case, the fiction is subsumed under a thoroughly pragmatic domain; in the second, it is relegated to the realm of private fantasies.

Due to the predominantly temporal nature of narrative fiction, ini-tial framings play a key role in negotiating the tension between the levels of communication and presentation. Focusing on the con-textualizing and mediating function of framings, I want to emphasize two important ways in which a study of initial framings can illuminate specific conceptions of narrative fiction. The first regards the de- and re-contextualization of frames of reference. Since the evocation of a ‘wordly’ frame of reference tends to be interpreted differently whether it occurs in framings that align with the extra-fictional communicative level of the novel or on the presentational plane of the fiction, examining the differences of its respective scope of signification can bring out crucial premises that inform the process of fictional transformation. The second regards the communicative interface of narrative fiction. An important objective of my comparison is to show


how differences in emphasizing either the communicative or pre-sentational dimension of novels affects the notion of narrative fiction.

The novels chosen for my comparison are representative of two critical stages in the history of the American novel. While Cooper began his career as a novelist at a time when American fiction was tenuously becoming an aesthetic medium of national self-expression, Gertrude Stein’s entrance onto the literary market represents the other extreme. As a prominent figure of the American avant-garde, her writ-ing bore the exclusive stamp of an elitist saloon-based culture, rad-ically at odds with established literary expectations. Thus, it is hardly surprising that positioning the novels in their respective historical discourse situation of the literary market required special framing efforts. Notwithstanding the differences between The Spy and The

Making of Americans, the novels share a common interest in the cha-racter and history of the United States and contribute, in their own particular ways, to a literary tradition of national identity. In fact, the evocation of these highly popular frames of reference ‘history’ and ‘American subject matter’ played a vital role in placing these novels on the literary market.

2. Paratextual Framings in The Spy and The Making of Americans

The most apparent framing difference between the two novels is the extensive use of paratextual framings in The Spy, which are virtually absent in The Making of Americans. Whereas the first edition of the The Spy contained a dedicatory epistle to an English friend and a pre-face to American readers, had epigraphs affixed to the title page and chapter headings, the first edition of The Making of Americans, the so-called plain edition, came without any prefatory framing2. Nor did it

2 The first edition was published by Robert McAlmond’s Contact Edition (Paris, 1925); a major part of the 500 copies printed were exported to the United States and published the following year by Albert and Charles Boni. In 1932 Harcourt, Brace


include a table of contents to facilitate navigation through its almost one thousand pages or illuminate its idiosyncratic segmentation, which varied between rather inconspicuous paragraph breaks of about three lines, full-fledged chapter breaks without headings, and internal title pages (the first of which occurs on page 287).

Historically, this difference reflects an overall tendency in later nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century novels to reduce para-textual framings. It can be attributed to an increasing familiarity with fictional speech and the specialization of the literary system. Many paratextual functions, particularly those concerned with embedding the novel in the social code of communication, had become obsolete; other functions such as creating important frames of expectancy were increasingly realized in contextual framings (such as the publisher’s promotion, critical reviews or the announcement of book clubs) and required only minimal textual marking to be recalled.

Although paratextual framings in The Making of Americans seem to belong in this development, their scarcity also bespeaks the exclu-sivity of the novel’s limited edition. Like many first works of expatri-ate modernist authors, Stein’s novel appeared in a small press and in limited numbers that mainly circulated among friends. Such small and sometimes even self-edited publications gave authors considerable freedom to control and experiment with paratextual framings that were traditionally held in the publisher’s and printer’s responsibility. Authors conjured up their own immediate aesthetic traditions and affiliations in self-written blurbs, gave free rein to idiosyncratic ty-pographies and playful arrangement of paratexts that deviated from traditional orders.

Not surprisingly, Harcourt’s attempt to sell the novel to a wider audience involved a number of paratextual framing changes. The most obvious one regards the very size of the novel. Far from being the involuntary result of Stein’s accumulative writing, the bulkiness and Company issued an abridged version of the novel that was marketed for a wider reading audience.


represents a crucial framing element that embodies the author’s ambi-tion to delineate exhaustively “A History of a Family’s Progress” (as the novel was originally subtitled). Harcourt, however, agreed to publish only an abridged version. Subsequently, the text was cut down to about half of its original length and the wordy subtitle was altered to the eponymous referent “The Hersland Family”. In addition, they furnished it with a table of contents and internal titles, and prefaced the volume with an introduction to the author’s life and stylistic peculiarities, which was contributed by the literary scholar and Stein’s friend, Bernard Faÿ3. The fact that editors felt it necessary to add framings that contextualize the text and provide guidelines for its reception is indicative of the novel’s radical focus on the presenta-tional level, which in many respects represents the very opposite of the contextual and communicative orientation that characterizes the framing of The Spy4.

3. Framing the Neutral Ground of American Fiction (Cooper) The intertextual references on the original title page of The Spy situate the novel in a distinct literary tradition. Notably, the subtitle or, more precisely, the generic indication “A Tale of Neutral Ground” invokes Walter Scott’s historical novels, which provided Cooper with a generic model. By emulating Scott, Cooper could profit both from Scott’s popularity among American readers and from the patriotic and historical respectability Scott bestowed upon his novelistic innovation.

3 The currently available edition of The Making of Americans published by Dalkey Archive (1995) reprints the original plain edition together with the table of contents and intertitles that were added for the Harcourt edition. It does not reprint Faÿ’s pref-ace but provides an introduction by Steven Meyer and a foreword by William H. Gass.

4 Cooper’s (1846: iii) mid-nineteenth century edition also affixed additional para-textual framings. Significantly, the supplementary introduction and footnotes were added by Cooper himself to delineate the novel’s “foundation in real life”.


As has long been acknowledged (cf. Dekker 1967, Wallace 1986, Verhoeven 1993), Cooper’s appropriation of the metaphor of ‘the neutral ground’ significantly modifies its connotative scope. While he subscribes to Scott’s metafictional sense of the phrase, whereby ‘neutral ground’ designates a common territory of historiography and fiction (and by implication the fruitful encroachment of factual accu-racy and fanciful entertainment)5, Cooper’s story-centered meaning is charged with the title’s notion of espionage. In the novel, ‘the neutral ground’ represents a lawless region caught up in the turmoil of the American Revolution. Designating the military demarcation zone in the Westchester County (in the State of New York), it is an area con-tested by British and American forces: “its very name implies a right to either party to move at pleasure over its territory” (2: 148). George Dekker has aptly paraphrased Cooper’s meaning of ‘neutral ground’ as “No-Man’s-Land” (1967: 33), a description that also lends itself to Cooper’s mythical reconstruction of the beginnings of the nation6. ‘Neutral’ comes to denote an unsettling equivocality that also charac-terizes the dubious moral and the uncertain political stances many protagonists assume in the novel. This is illustrated best in the main character, Harvey Birch, who, suspected of being a royal spy, turns out to be a true patriot who served George Washington as a double agent.

The novel is replete with motifs of double-crossings and disguises. A central function of such double-entendres in the narrative strategy of the novel is to blur the conflict and contrasts between loyalty and patriotism, the Americans and the British, and a host of other sup-planted oppositions. Re-reading Cooper’s metaphor of ‘the neutral

5 For Scott’s notion of a ‘neutral ground’ see his dedicatory epistle to Ivanhoe(1819) and chapter thirteen of Waverley (1814).

6 See also The Spy (1821: 2: 148): “the neutral ground […] is an appellation that originates with the conditions of this country” and Captain Wharton’s and Harvey Birch’s trip to the neutral ground: “At length they arrived where the mountains sunk into rough and unequal hillocks, and passed at once from the barren sterility of the precipices, to the imperfect culture of the neutral ground” (ibid.: 143).


ground’ as “neutralizing the land”, Verhoeven has described this strategy as “successfully clearing the scene of his imaginary America of all traces of conflict and discord to the transcendent realm of myth” (1993: 73). Accordingly, Cooper resorts to narrative fiction to re-concile the historical with the imaginary for an ideal history of the United States.

His narrative strategy of fictionalizing the American Revolution has a remarkable parallel in the paratextual framing of the novel, which programmatically announces the long overdue conception of American fiction as an independent means of national self-expression. Readers familiar with Cooper’s anonymously published debut novel, Precaution (1820), a novel patterned on Jane Austen’s Persuasion and written in imitation of Amelia Opie’s moral sentimental fiction (see Wallace 1986: 64-84), may in fact wonder whether the “Author of ‘Precaution’”, as Cooper is referred to on the title page, is not another double agent altogether, who having posed as an English author now reveals his true patriotic self.

The epigraph reprinted on the title page provides a telling example of Cooper’s strategy to frame the novel in a way that at once reveals and conceals its English influence. It quotes from Scott’s The Lay of

the Last Minstrel without mentioning the author’s name: “Breathes there a man with soul so dead, / Who never to himself hath said, / This is my own, my native land!” In its decontextualized form the quote may be voiced by speakers of any nation. Along these lines Cooper envisions American fiction to obtain international recognition7. In the

7 The effectiveness of this appropriation can be inferred from its recurrent use by writers who were themselves emulating Cooper, a practice that has turned the epi-graph into a secondary generic marker of patriotic historical novels. A case in point is Charles Jacobs Peterson’s novelette Kate Aylesford: A Story of the Refugees, which was advertised in the publisher’s paratext – as a “historical novel” by which the au-thor “has established his reputation as a romance writer of the first order” (1855: [n. p.]). In allusion to Cooper’s novel, the epigraph reoccurs in Kurt Vonnegut’s post-modernist spy novel Mother Night (1962), in which the anachronistic appropriation of eighteenth-century rhetoric by American fascists is satirized. Significantly, the epi-graph, like the dedication to Mata Hari (an exotic dancer who spied for the Germans


dedication to his English friend he appeals to patriotic love as a transnational sentiment, arguing that, although the novel “has been chiefly written with a view to induce love” (iii) to his own country, he hopes that it will be equally appreciated abroad. In the ensuing preface to his compatriots he maintains that “the very singularity of the circumstance” – that an American novelist has set out for a genuine depiction of American characters and scenes – “give[s] the book the small chance of being noticed abroad” (v).

To embark on such an endeavor, Cooper incipiently argues, is to reclaim literary new land as this “ground is still untrodden” (v). Like the demilitarized zone of ‘the neutral ground’ it is, however, rather a contested field troubled by mediocre imitations of European novels or – which Cooper finds even worse – the propagating of European ste-reotypes of America. Similar to his dichotomous definition of ‘the neutral ground’, Cooper sets up a comparison of advantages and dis-advantages of innovating American fiction.

On a closer reading, however, Cooper’s contrastive appraisal of the state of the art merely reiterates what have become stock arguments to uphold the social value of early American fiction. As can be gleaned from title pages of early American novels, indicating the author’s American nationality (or even residence) and highlighting an American subject matter were popular devices to appeal to the read-er’s sense of patriotism and to endow the narrative with a sense of authenticity. Likewise, in the tide of imported European novels, the indication that a work contained an original American story was often deployed to suggest novelty as regards both topicality and literary in-novation. Further, what Cooper refers to as disadvantages of writing an American novel are rather demands for improving the social value of American fiction. For instance, his objection that a genuine Ameri-can novel will disappoint (especially female) readers, whose expecta-

during the Second World War), appears to be part of the editorial fiction, according to which Vonnegut merely edits the confessions of Howard W. Campell’s life as an American Nazi.


tions are formed on stereotypical representations of America and novels patterned on seduction plots, indirectly asserts the truthfulness and pedagogical value of the novel at hand. Following Scott’s suc-cessful scheme, it upgrades the novel from the level of ephemeral popular entertainment by impinging on it a sense of moral criticism and historiography.

In a sense Cooper’s coming to terms with the state of American fiction, by balancing the pros and cons, creates a neutral ground where the British literary legacy and previous indigenous literary achieve-ments are at once negotiated and obscured. The implicit invocation of Scott and his dismissive mention of Charles Brockden Brown, who stands for a host of other unnamed authors, are cases in point. The Spy

shows an anxiety of influence where misprision takes on a paradoxical form of acknowledgment, the main purpose of which is to boost Cooper’s authority as writer. More importantly, by extending the me-taphor of ‘the neutral ground’ from the presentational level of the narrative onto the extra-fictional level of communication, he enhances the social importance of the narrative.

The paratextual framing unequivocally situates him in a realm of public communication, which as a privileged domain of authority and control provides Cooper with an ideal stance to lance his criticism of inapt models for American fiction and misguided reading habits. Further, to underscore the social dimension of novelistic exchanges, he aligns intratextual framings of narrative transmission with paratext-ual ones. Telling his story through a covert heterodiegetic narrator invites his reader to assimilate (in the absence of contradicting intra-textual clues) the narrator’s stance with that of the author. The exten-sive use of authorial communicative and narrative framings is indica-tive of the author’s anxiety for control at a time when literary institu-tions underwent a dramatic process of extension and specialization. Ironically, while Cooper was the first American professional novelist,


he was also among the last authors to fully control the publication and sale of his work8.

I want to end my discussion of The Spy by addressing two non-verbal framing aspects that are characteristic of this formative stage of professional novel writing in the United States: the format in which The Spy was issued and the typography applied reflect respectively the formal and economic constraints of devising novels during that period and incipient commercial efforts of marketing the novel as a popular genre.

Virtually all first editions of Cooper’s novels were issued in two volumes. As William Charvat observed (cf. 1859: chap. 3), the preva-lence of two-volume editions between 1820 and 1844 roughly coincides with literary careers of the first generation of professional American authors such as Cooper, Simms, Paulding, and Sedgwick9. It can, in fact, be regarded as the first standard format that shaped the formative stage of indigenous novel production before it was super-seded by a greater variety of publishing formats, which in turn documents the increased proliferation and diversification of American fiction during the American Renaissance. On the one hand, this rigid externally-imposed two-part structure was inimical to developing complex plot structures and, to a considerable extent, it predetermined the novelist’s compositional practice; on the other, it allowed for the

8 As Wallace points out, Cooper was particularly irritated by the influence of critical reviews on his work: his subsequent novel, “The Pioneers challenged the critics directly twice over. First, in his preface Cooper had chosen to make popularity his measure of literary success and ignore the arbiters of public taste; he had dared to call them asses and to doubt the objective principles upon which criticism was founded. Second, the prepublication printing of extracts from the novel in the New York Commercial Advertiser (and the reprinting of those abstracts by other newspapers) seemed very much like an attempt to bypass altogether the judgment of reviewers by appealing directly to the reading public.” (1986: 174-175)

9 See Charvat (1959: 80-83). The origins of the two-volume pattern can be traced back to British novel publishing of the 1790s, where it was soon replaced by the three-volume format introduced by Scott’s Waverley. Yet, while many title pages of American novels published before the 1820s announced a two-volume edition, they were often bound in one for economical reasons.


prolific production of novels that was demanded of professional novelists. As Charvat points out with the example of Cooper, it en-couraged writers to pad the allotted space with “improvised and mis-cellaneous material […] much of which was only loosely related to the plot” (1959: 81-82).

Another framing element that orchestrates Cooper’s ambition of writing novels that are both popular and socially respectable is the calculated use of extravagant typefaces such as the outlined letters in which the main title words are set (see Illustration 2). This embellish-ing typographical effect (which follows a clear vertical arrangement of saliency) differs radically from typographical diversity that adorned many eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth-century title pages, alternating frequently within the same line between different sizes, capitalization and subscripts, script and black letter (or gothic) types. While this early typographic variety represented a historical degree zero of book design and cut across literary and non-literary texts, ec-centric typefaces such as decorated and outlined types were seldom used in the literary domain. They were mainly deployed in advertis-ing, where its paramount attention-getting function was to endow products with a sense of novelty and, ideally, an unmistakable identi-ty. The appearance of outlined types in The Spy can thus be read as an early sign of the commercial expansion of the literary market and its concomitant specialization. Significantly, in the later part of the nine-teenth century, the exuberant typefaces came to connote commercially popular fiction.


Illustration 2: Title page of the first edition of The Spy (1821)


Illustration 3: Cover of the Contact Edition of The Making of Americans (1925)


Illustration 4: Title page of the Harcourt edition of The Making of Americans (1934)


4. Framing the Making of American Fiction (Stein)

When Gertrude Stein first published The Making of Americans the literary system could not have been more different from the one in which Cooper’s novels appeared, particularly if one considers the development and emergence of new agencies involved in the produc-tion, publishing, promotion, and distribution processes. If Cooper had to create a reading audience for his works during the formative years of American fiction, Stein’s famous quote “I am writing for myself and strangers” (1925/1995: 289) suggests that she virtually had to invent readers for what she claimed to be “the beginning, really be-ginning of modern writing” (1933: 231).

The protracted and complicated publishing history of The Making

of Americans, which extended over two decades, documents this dif-ficulty, as much as it shows the critical role framings played in the reception of the novel’s serial, ‘plain’ and abridged publications respectively. The novel’s partial publication in the Transatlantic Re-

view, where its first hundred pages were serialized between April and December 1924, was received much more favorably than the first book edition. On the one hand, this may have been due to the brevity of the installments; on the other hand, the magazine’s preoccupation with modernist writing and transatlantic themes provided a congenial context to the novel’s opening part that recounts the emigration of two German families to the United States (see Tischler 2003: 26). Such contextualization played a key function in the paratextual framings to the Harcourt edition, which attenuated the self-reflexive games with contextual and communicative frames that characterized the pre-sentational packaging of the plain edition.

Although national and historical frames of reference feature pro-minently in the original novel’s title, their peculiar evocation on the title page and the ambiguous phrasing of the title can be read as (co-vert) signals that deflect the referential function of the title words. For example, the frame of reference ‘history’ is triggered verbally by mentioning it as a word in the subtitle, and it is evoked syntactically


through the anachronistic wording of the subtitle (“Being a History of a Family’s Progress”) reminiscent of early titling conventions. This impression is further buttressed through typographic layout of the title page, which was blatantly at odds with contemporary book design. The stark contrast between thick and thin strokes and the horizontal stress for thick strokes recall eighteenth-century style types. The odd spacing, the lack of kerning (which is particularly evident in the word “MAKING”), and the elaborately ornamental vignette add to its antiquated look (see Illustration 3).

This conspicuous iconicity draws attention to the very bookish quality of the novel, its physical presence as an artifact (7½ inches wide, 9½ inches long and 4½ inches thick). The material weight of the book is juxtaposed with a manifold emphasis on process. On the cover of the Contact edition this aspect is marked by the substantive and conjunctive gerunds ‘making’ and ‘being’, the words ‘history’ and ‘progress’, the redundant explication that the work was ‘written’, and the time frame of composition, “1906 – 1908”. The stress on materiality and aspects of process is combined in the ambiguous wording of the main title, according to which ‘Americans’ can be understood both as producer and product; or as Steven Meyer puts it in his excellent introduction to the novel: “as the process whereby Americans are made […] or the process by which Americans make anything” (1995: xvi).

In targeting the novel for a wider audience, the Harcourt edition, which was designed by the eminent typographer Robert Josephy10, re-frained from such self-reflexive innuendos. The title page set in mo-notone type with square serifs bears reference to the New Topology of the European avant-garde and its rejection of ornamentalism (see Illustration 4). The same type was chosen for the extended initials of

10 Robert Josephy is sometimes credited with being the first professional free-lance book designer in the United States. Among his numerous contributions to the modern-ists’ preoccupation with the material and graphic aspects of literature are the designs for Dos Passos’ typographic extravaganza in his trilogy U.S.A.


each section – somewhat alleviating the densely printed pages and their sparse use of segmentation11. Thus, the choice of typeface un-equivocally aligns the novel with the modernist movement. Changing the subtitle to “The Hersland Family” had a similar contextualizing effect. Although this alteration is often taken as a result of the abridgement, it clearly supports the publisher’s efforts to market it as a sequel to The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which played a fundamental role in the promotion of the novel (see Conrad 1995, Curnutt 1999, Tischler 2003, Turner 2003). The dust jacket invited the reader to join “[t]housands of her fellow Americans [who] read with delight the warm, simple story of Gertrude Stein’s life” (quoted in Turner 2003: 122-125).

In contrast to the Harcourt edition, the title page to Stein’s plain edition recasts the novel’s self-reflexive concern with the process of formation. The reader is given the impression that the book, its con-tents, and the subject matter are the very forms that present the book, outline its contents, and mediate its subject matter. In this sense The

Making of Americans tells a history of changing configurations that have shaped characters and have entangled them in plot patterns. It can be read as a meta-history of narrative form where, as Meyer puts it, “the form that American family histories generally take, the pecu-liar ‘progress’ recorded in The Making of Americans, is itself the pro-duct of […] an abstraction” (1995: xvi)12. For the process of reception this means that the reader (not unlike the beholder of an abstract paint-ing) is constantly deferred to an aesthetic contemplation of forms. In terms of the basic cognitive levels of the novelistic frame, this can be

11 As Turner observes, non-verbal cues to allude to the historical subject matter were employed in contextual framings: “[...] in some of the advertisements for The Making of Americans, the [publishing] company placed the copy within a colonial looking sign. Without any references to the past in the copy, the title and the visual clues were enough” (2003: 123).

12 On Stein’s self-reflexive stylistics, which Tischler recently described as “the pro-gressive excision of referents from language” (2003: 15), see also Meyer’s concept of “abstraction” (1995: xvi) and Reid’s monograph Art By Subtraction (1958).


experienced as the leveling of the communicative and presentational dimensions, whereby communicative framings lose in directional force.

In the textual make-up of the novel this leveling is manifest in the sparse use of paratextual framings and devices of segmentation, which for the main part of the book leaves the reader with a hermetic block of seamless small pica type print. Significantly, traditional framing functions, which in The Spy are located in the paratextual apparatus, are not simply muted but realized through intratextual framings. To illustrate this I want to single out three important framing arguments that parallel the initial structures of the two novels. They concern the novels’ relation to American history, their epistemological premises of fiction, and their programmatic deviation from literary conventions.

Like The Spy, The Making of Americans stresses, in a prominent initial position, the fact that the work at hand is written by an Ameri-can and remarks, albeit somewhat tongue in cheek, on the benefits of making American history one’s literary subject:

It has always seemed to me rare privilege, this, of being an American, a real American, whose tradition it has taken scarcely sixty years to create. We need only realise our parents, remember our grandparents and know ourselves and our history is complete. (Stein 1925/1995: 3)

While Stein’s invocation of American history (ironic, perhaps, in that it contradicts the lengthiness of the novel) suggests the modernist impetus of eradicating tradition by writing it up exhaustively, it also has some interesting literary historical underpinnings13. The time span of sixty years, as a period that brings together three generations, is – by tradition – a typically literary one and one which, following the model set by Scott, has become a common addendum to titles of historical novels14. Reading the above quote in the context of Ameri-

13 Cf. Lisa Ruddick’s (1990: 124-136) discussion of the beginning as “Killing the Nineteenth Century” (124) and by deconstructing its paramount épistèmes of historic-ity, heredity, and psychology.

14 Cf., e.g., the historical novel The Linwoods: Or, “Sixty Years Since”, in Americaby Catherine Sedgwick, who remarks on her choice of title in a footnote to the


can literary history and comparing it with beginnings of nineteenth-century historical novels and family sagas, one can observe that the narrator’s metafictional comment on the (literary advantages of the) relatively brief history of America was in fact a not uncommon way to begin a novel. A case in point is Charles Frederick Briggs’s The

Adventures of Harry Franco: A Tale of the Great Panic, where the convenience of not having to bother with lengthy genealogical reiterations is already hinted at in the brief abstract to the first “an-cestral” chapter which “[b]eing the beginning of the Book, is very properly devoted to the beginning of the Hero”. The first sentence starts as follows: “It is a generally received opinion in some parts of the world, that a man must of necessity have had ancestors; but, in our truly independent country, we contrive to get along very well without them.” (1839: 1)

The close alignment with literary and narrative history (as opposed to factual historiography) reverberates on the novel’s epistemology of fiction, which, compared to The Spy, takes Cooper’s hybrid view of fiction as a conglomerate of factual and fanciful elements a radical step further. Cooper valued narrative fiction as a complement to histo-riography particularly for its power to portray experiential aspects such as passions and feelings; for Stein the very fact that narrative fiction allows one to experience things vicariously gives fiction the primacy over any kind of wisdom distilled from the experiential con-text narratives provide15.

preface that “[i]t has been suggested, that the title might be deemed ambitious; that it might indicate an expectation, that ‘this sixty years since in America’ would take place with the ‘sixty years since’ of the great Master” (1835: [n. p.]).

15 See the following passage from The Making of Americans: “[…] it is a strange feeling one has in one’s later living, when one finds the story-books really have truth in them, for one loved the story-books earlier, one loved to read them but one never really believed there was truth in them, and later when one by living has gained a new illusion and a kind of wisdom, one reads again in them, there it is, the things we have learned since to believe in, there it is and we know then that the man or the woman who wrote them had just the same kind of wisdom in them we have been spending


The appreciation of the experiential aspect of narration clearly un-derscores the novel’s emphasis on progress and it accounts for the narrator’s resistance to follow established forms of narration. While Cooper argued that characterization should not be distorted by literary conventions but accord to basic assumption about reality, the narrator of The Making of Americans programmatically defies any determina-tion of character whether it is based on arguments of heredity, upbringing, or constrained by conventions of storytelling. Having introduced the character of Julia, she asks the reader to regard char-acterization as an ongoing process:

And so those who read much in story books surely now can tell what to expect of her, and yet, please reader, remember that this is perhaps not the whole of our story either, neither her father for her, nor the living down her mother who is in her, for I am not ready yet to take away the character from our Julia, for truly she may work out as the story books would have her or we may find all different kinds of things for her, and so reader, please remember, the future is not yet certain for her, and be you well warned reader, from the vain-glory of being sudden in your judgment of her. (15)

The novel’s self-imposed claim of keeping characterization open in order to acknowledge the dynamics of being, progress, and change inevitably creates a framing paradox since to characterize means to select certain aspects that are taken to be relevant according to established schemata. The same applies to the vicarious experiencing of fiction, which in order to be shared needs to be communicated. In other words, the arresting effect of framing activities, their controlling function to shape what we perceive and how we perceive, is at odds with the novel’s poetics of openness.

Curiously enough, Stein resolves this paradox through an excessive use of intratextual framings. The very first two pages of the book read like a series of metafictional comments that repeatedly announce the history of a family’s progress. Elaborating on the incipiently outlined span of three generations (quoted above), the narrator provides a cursory inventory of the families concluding roughly every paragraph our lives winning, and this shows that any one wise in learning that no young people can learn wisdom from the talking of the older ones around them” (Stein 1995: 29).


with the reminder that they “make the history for us of this family and its progress” (4; one can, in fact, read these two pages as yet another ‘intratextual leveling’ of a paratextual element: the missing table of contents). The repeated framings draw attention to their dynamic aspect. They suggest that framings are not simply viewed as signals of the premise system but come to signify the very activity of construct-ing the premises on which The Making of Americans evolves.

The enumerative way in which the protagonists are presented and the repetitive metafictional tags that mark their recounting reveal another central narratological concern, which is to bring together two kinds of iterabilities: narrative iterability, which allows us to follow a story line, and what Stein has referred to in her Lectures in America as “natural counting, that is counting by one one one one one” (1935/1988: 228). The former carries us away into the fictional uni-verse of the story; in the latter, we are taken up with each numerical and nominal item. As Wendy Steiner suggests in this context, “[i]n reading repetitions we do not project ourselves into the future or con-taminate the presence with memories but live in the very nowness of each moment” (1985: xii).

To this effect of blending the story time with the time of its pro-duction and reception we find a similar hypotrophy of framings that is concerned with the mediation of the story and its communicative em-bedding. In contrast to The Spy, where paratextual and intratextual framings address the roles of Cooper as author and narrator re-spectively, the intratextual framings in The Making of Americans

suggest that there are two sides to the narrator: a storyteller and a writer, neither of whom should be identified with the historical author (see Meyer 1995: xxvii). The afore-quoted warning to the reader not to judge the character of Julia lightly, in this sense can be ascribed to the storyteller who comments on the story and the act of narration. Juxtaposed we find a writer-persona preoccupied with the progress of history as book, whom we may identify in the following evocation of the reader:


Bear it in mind my reader, but truly I never feel it that there ever can be for me any such a creature, no it is this scribbled and dirty and lined paper that is really to be to me always my receiver, – but anyhow reader, bear it in your mind – will there be for me ever any such a creature, – what I have said always before to you, that this that I write down a little each day here on my scraps of paper for you is not just an ordinary kind of novel with a plot and conversations to amuse you, but a record of a decent family progress […]. (Stein 1995: 33-34)

This passage like her apostrophe to her readers as “strangers” (see

1995: 289, which Stein quoted again in The Autobiography and “The Story of a Book”) have been read as a more or less direct expression of Stein’s difficulty in getting her work published (cf. Conrad 1995, Meyer 1995, Turner 2003). Conversely, her refusal to write “an ordinary kind of novel” suggests reading the quote as a statement of the writer’s elitist exclusivity. Accordingly, her seclusion from the reader can be interpreted as the exclusion of the reader.

Notwithstanding such context-centered interpretations, I would like to suggest that this passage illustrates well Stein’s strategy of transferring contextual aspects of literary communication onto the presentational level of fiction. Stylistically, the conspicuous parenthe-ses – which are, as it were, framings of framings – are iconic of a blocked exchange with the reader. The writer’s sense of reclusion and lack of contact with the public direct her attention to the material re-sources, a gesture which at once expounds on the problem of textual communication and investigates it imaginatively. Following the tracks of communication or even the discursive routes that mark the lines of the page is put forward as an experience not altogether different from pursuing the story lines. In other words, Stein suggests extending the contemplation of storyworlds to the experiencing of language itself and what it literally depicts when being displayed on the page.

In sum, the notion of narrative exchange underpinning the novel is radically minimal in at least three important respects. Though the experiential dimension of narrative as a medium of vicarious expe-rience lies at the heart of Stein’s conception, (1) the iterative structure of experiencing Stein’s fiction encompasses the perusal of the story and even more so its linguistic code. The emphatic shift from vicari-


ous experience of events to the experiencing of language attends (2) a programmatic bracketing of linguistic reference. In a similar way, (3) the communicative exchange is presented as an immanent and presen-tational one. Rather than regard writing and reading as gestures that transcend the text and reach out to the author and reader respectively, Stein presents writing and reading as private interactions with the means of communication and as an experiential probing that precedes the communicative act. Hence, the more we conceive of narrative fiction in terms of its presentational dimension, the more we transfer narrative fiction to the realm of private intuition. By the same token, we withdraw it from the domain of communicative control. In The

Making of Americans this can be sensed in paradoxical guidelines that suggest reading the book without the safeguard of conventional ex-pectations; it even extends to directional cues such as the extremely sparse use of punctuation.

The limits of this radically reductive conception of narrative fiction may be inferred from the rather disappointing sales figures of the novel. They are immediately manifest in the insertion of compensat-ory paratextual framings in ensuing editions of the novel. Not unlike the publisher’s efforts to market the novel by appealing to traditional pleasures of novel reading (e.g., by advertising it as a historical novel), Bernhard Faÿ’s preface to the Harcourt edition is at pains to negotiate Stein’s experimental prose with traditional expectations of reading fiction. Curiously enough, he describes his first encounter with Gertrude Stein as having been “struck by the feeling of realism” (1934: ix).

Faÿ offers the reader a personal and largely anecdotal portrait of the author, a commentary on her style as well as the central interest of the novel in American history, using a rhetoric that supports the publisher’s promotional interests without betraying the novel’s poetics of openness. While he draws heavily on the popular image of Stein as illustrious figure of the Parisian avant-garde, he does so with the re-servation that “[i]t is difficult and […] clumsy to describe what Miss


Gertrude Stein has said because she always speaks and always lives in the present” (ibid.: x-xi). Likewise, in his introduction to Stein’s repetitive style he insists several times that her method of writing cannot be put down to a formula. In the last of three equally long sec-tions, Faÿ comments on the way Stein treats American history, by placing the novel in the long tradition of literary works that have at-tempted to describe the United States but have failed to present them as completely and continuously as the novel at hand. In this respect the preface comes closest to the traditional prefatory claim that pre-ceded The Spy. Stylistically conspicuous are Faÿ’s allusions to Stein’s prose. In pointing out how Stein has succeeded in overcoming the shortcomings of other writers that had failed to depict the magnitude and diversity of the US, he imitates Stein’s deceptively simple style as follows:

But generally they [i.e. other writers] are so busy and so hurried that they forget that America is a big place filled with a lot of Americans. They write narrow sto-ries of small non-descript people. Miss Stein loves space and loves to see a lot of people filling space, so she wrote a big book and she filled it with a lot of people. She put in it a great number of married people, spinsters, girls, boys, students, professors, bankers, housekeepers, lawyers, preachers, doctors, and even gentle-men and children. (Faÿ 1934: xx)

This use of prefatory framings contributed by persons other than the author or associates of the publishing company is characteristic of mass-market editions of modernist fiction. On the one hand, such allographic framings (cf. Genette 1987: 14) document the increasing critical detachment in framing fiction; on the other hand, as Faÿ’s simulation of Stein’s style underscores, they are revelatory of the complicit way in which modernists engaged in mass culture. Intro-ducing a novel by an informed insider often proved conducive to rein-forcing the aesthetic autonomy of the work and avoided authorial in-trusions on poetological or biographical grounds. At the same time it


provided an effective way to endow the author with an aura of bohe-mian elitism16.

5. Conclusion

It is impossible to provide a historical outline of changing framing practices here; yet, I would like to conclude by commenting on the way in which the positioning of the authors in The Spy and The Mak-

ing of Americans compares to framing strategies in other periods. To begin with the special case of allographic prefaces, a historical survey of paratextual framings shows that they are hardly used in first edi-tions of novels, but were traditionally reserved for posthumous publi-cations. A significant change in this convention occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when allographic prefaces were more often than before affixed to first editions of living authors. In the majority of these cases the third party was introduced as a critical authority to underscore the literary and more often social importance of the novel17.

A similar move towards critically detached framings is shown by authorial uses of prefatory framings or the abandonment of authorial prefaces altogether. Henry James’s novelistic œuvre is a well-known and exemplary case in point. Whereas nearly all first editions of his novels appeared without prefatory framings, his prefaces to the New York Edition revisit his work through the lens of a critic whose evaluative criticism subdues autobiographical relations. The re-fram-ing of his work in terms of aesthetic theory points to a characteristic-

16 Significantly, Bernard Faÿ speaks both as friend and literary academic. Another exemplary case in point is Ford Madox Ford’s introduction to Hemingway’s Modern Library edition of A Farewell To Arms, in which the peer novelist and friend combines his witty sketch of “the brave times in Paris” (when modernists believed “that salvation could be found in leaving out capitals” [1932: x]) with a close reading of initial passages of the novel.

17 Cf., e.g., William Still’s introduction to Frances E. W. Harper’s novel of passing Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted (1892), or Dr. Georg Brandes’ introduction to Upton Sinclair’s agitprop novel King Coal (1917).


ally modernist framing gesture: namely, to conceive of reality in correspondence with aesthetic frames of references18. As I have sug-gested in remarking upon the epistemological underpinnings of The

Making of Americans, the radical disembedding of narrative fiction correlates with a view that regards the constitution of reality as a dy-namic process of narrative fabrication.

In this respect Cooper’s alignment with historiography and his emphasis on realistic descriptions of American customs and landscape represent the opposite case. His extensive use of extra-fictional com-municative framings and the close alignment of the author’s and the narrator’s voice is representative of framing strategies in early Ameri-can novels. Framings by third-person narrators often assumed a stance that pretended to be identical with the historical author or otherwise claimed to reside rather with the extra-fictional level. To a similar end, editorial fictions and epistolary novels provided another popular way of narrative transmission that could suggest a clear-cut distinction between the levels of social communication and fictional presentation and thereby avoid a paradoxical entanglement of these levels. Comments on the act of fictionalization that address the non-identity between author and narrator are relatively seldom during the early period of novelistic writing since such comments tend to foreground that writing and reading fiction involve some sort of role playing. By this I do not want to suggest that the role modification was not part of the historical contract of fiction nor that readers were unaware of it; rather, I want to argue that the effect created by not marking the role modification between author and narrator figures was conducive to the ostensively subservient function of narrative fiction to extra-literary social frames.

In the second third of the nineteenth century prefatory framings acknowledged more openly the duplicity of fictional games either

18 Cf. John H. Pearson, who argues that “James’s prefaces seek to transform the world in order to make it more suitable to his art” (1990: 28).


through explicit mention that the assumed identity between author and narrator figures is part of the contract of fiction19 or by making the distinction a matter of playful confusion. Edgar Allan Poe’s literary hoaxes of intricate editorial fictions in The Adventures of Arthur Gor-

don Pym (1838) and Melville’s experimentation with generic expecta-tions in Moby-Dick (1851) and Pierre (1852) count among the most radical gestures of aesthetic disentanglement during the American Renaissance. They represent a kind of forefront of a general move to increasingly conceive of the narrative plane as a sphere of its own. Formally, this can be seen in a tendency to subsume prefatory argu-ments by the main text or in hybrid forms such as introductory sketch-es, which like the famous “Custom-House” sketch in Hawthorne’s The

Scarlet Letter (1850) dramatize the transition from the extra-fictional reality to the storyworld and the concomitant author-narrator transformation. While in Romantic fiction the paratextual label ‘intro-duction’ often signified entering the storyworld, the meaning of its critical and allographic use in the modernist era is frequently to provide the reader with textual information about the highly specializ-ed discourse of literary fiction, as does the preface to the Harcourt edition of The Making of Americans.

As I have tried to illustrate by contrasting the emphasis on context-centered framings in The Spy with the predominantly self-reflexive and text-centered uses of framings in The Making of Americans, studying initial framings offers valuable insights into the historical and cultural functions of narrative forms. Responding to important cultural imperatives of the time the paratextual framings in The Spy

19 Cf., e.g., William Simms’s note “To the Reader” in his fictive autobiography Richard Hurdis: “In the arrangement of my narrative, I have not suffered myself to conduct it, as if the events had been told according as they became known to the narrator; but, for the easier comprehension of the reader, I have stated them, as if after subsequent consideration, putting each in its connection with its fellow for the sake of more coherence. The hero and the author become, under this plan, identical – though I would not have any of my friends suppose the author and narrator to be one.” (1838: [n. p.])


strongly align the novel with the social discourse of education and advertise its patriotic appeal. In the original edition of the The Making

of Americans such extra-fictional communicative and interpretative guides are transferred onto the presentational level. Among other things, this radical gesture of narrative subversion, which turns the framing into the framed, draws attention to aspects that are traditi-onally excluded from literary interpretations. While the format and typography of The Spy were largely determined by convention and entrepreneurial considerations, in The Making of Americans the semi-otic investment of material aspects of the book turn them into crucial ‘narrating’ devices.

Accordingly, initial framing in The Spy and The Making of Ameri-

cans can be mapped onto to the diagram of basic levels of the novel-istic frame (see Illustration 1) as follows (see Illustration 5).

Illustration 5: Predominant alignment of initial framings in The Spyand The Making of Americans

The Spy represents an exemplarily clear instance where paratextual framings and intratextual framings correspond to the communicative and presentational levels respectively. This clear-cut alignment tends


to strengthen the communicative and social dimensions of fiction and is further corroborated by the unmarked modification of the roles between the author-figure and the narrator. In the diagram this con-text-centered emphasis in framings is indicated by outwardly serated lines.

By contrast, the sparse use of paratextual framings in The Making

of Americans enhances the impression that framings that relate to the communicative situation are transferred onto the presentational level. In the diagram this shift in emphasis from the level of communication to the level of presentation is illustrated by the discontinuous line that stands for the communicative frame. The predominantly text-centered alignment of framings in the novel is marked by inwardly serated lines. In The Making of Americans the staging of the communicative frame extends to the very resources of communication and means of presentation, focusing on elements of the novelistic frame that tradi-tionally have been left unattended. In doing so, Gertrude Stein probes the limits of what can be verbally presented and become the object of imaginary perception by presenting, as it were, what language repre-sents.

References

Bateson, Gregory (1955/2000). “A Theory of Play and Fantasy”. Gregory Bateson. Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. San Fran-cisco, CA: Chandler. 177-193.

Briggs, Charles Frederick (1839). The Adventures of Harry Franco: A Tale of the Great Panic. 2 vols. New York, NY: Saunders.

Charvat, William (1959). Literary Publishing in America, 1790-1850. Philadelphia, PA: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.

Conrad, Bryce (1995). “Gertrude Stein in the American Marketplace”. Journal of Modern Literature 19/2: 215-233.

Cooper, James Fenimore (1821). The Spy: A Tale of Neutral Ground. 2 vols. New York, NY: Wiley & Halsted.

— (1846). The Spy: A Tale of Neutral Ground. New York, NY: Dodd, Mead.


Curnutt, Kirk (1999). “Inside and Outside: Gertrude Stein on Identity, Celebrity, and Authenticity”. Journal of Modern Literature 23/2: 291-308.

Darnton, Robert (1989). “What is the History of Books?”. Cathy Davidson, ed. Reading in America: Literature and Social History. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. 27-52.

Dekker, George (1967). James Fenimore Cooper: The Novelist. Lon-don: Routledge.

Faÿ, Bernard (1934). “Preface”. Gertrude Stein. The Making of Americans. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace. ix-xiii.

Ford, Ford Madox (1932). “Introduction”. Ernest Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms. New York, NY: Modern Library. ix-xx.

Genette, Gérard (1987). Seuils. Collection ‘Poétique’. Paris: Seuil. Goffman, Erving (1974/1986). Frame Analysis: An Essay on the

Organization of Experience. Boston, MA: Northeastern Univ. Press.

Iser, Wolfgang (1991). Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre: Perspektiven literarischer Anthropologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Lanser, Susan Sniader (1981). The Narrative Act: Point of View in Prose Fiction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.

Luhmann, Niklas (1995). Die Kunst der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Meyer, Steven (1995). “Introduction”. Gertrude Stein. The Making of Americans. Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press. xiii-xxxv.

Nünning, Ansgar (2000). “Towards a Cultural and Historical Narra-tology: A Survey of Diachronic Approaches, Concepts, and Re-search Projects”. Bernhard Reitz, Sigried Rieuwerts, eds. Anglis-tentag 1999 Mainz: Proceedings. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. 345-373.

Pearson, John H. (1990). “The Politics of Framing in the Late Nine-teenth Century”. Mosaic 23/1: 15-30.

Peterson, Charles Jacobs (1855). Kate Aylesford: A Story of the Refu-gees. Philadelphia, PA: T. B. Peterson.

Reid, B. L. (1958). Art By Subtraction: A Dissenting Opinion of Ger-trude Stein. Norman, OK: Univ. of Oklahoma Press.

Ruddick, Lisa (1990). Reading Gertrude Stein: Body, Text, Gnosis. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.

Sedgwick, Catherine (1835). The Linwoods: Or, “Sixty Years Since”in America. New York, NY: Harper.


Simms, William (1838). Richard Hurdis. Philadelphia, PA: Carey, Hart.

Stein, Gertrude (1925). The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family’s Progress. Paris: Contact.

— (1933). The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace.

— (1934). The Making of Americans: The Hersland Family. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace.

— (1935/1988). Lectures in America. London: Virago. — (1995). The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family’s

Progress. Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press. Steiner, Wendy (1985). “Introduction”. Gertrude Stein. Lectures in

America. London: Virago. ix-xxvii. Tischler, Alyson (2003). “A Rose is a Pose: Steinian Modernism and

Mass Culture”. Journal of Modern Literature 26/3-4: 12-27. Turner, Catherine (2003). Marketing Modernism Between the Two

World Wars. Amherst, MA: Univ. of Massachusetts Press. Verhoeven, W. M. (1993). “Neutralizing the Land: The Myth of

Authority, and the Authority of Myth in Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy”. W. M. Verhoeven, ed. James Fenimore Cooper: New Historical and Literary Contexts. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 71-87.

Wallace, James D. (1986). Early Cooper and His Audience. New York, NY: Columbia Univ. Press.

Wolf, Werner (1999). “Framing Fiction: Reflections on a Narrato-logical Concept and an Example: Bradbury, Mesonge”. Walter Grünzweig, Andreas Solbach, eds. Grenzüberschreitungen: Narra-tologie im Kontext/Transcending Boundaries: Narratology in Con-text. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. 97-146.


(Paratextual) Framing and the Work of Art

E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Prinzessin Brambilla

Till Dembeck

Frames can be described as emergent phenomena, that is, as phenomena whose existence clearly depends on certain factors one can name and distinguish (the framing), but whose occurrence cannot be causally determined by these factors. This paper examines a literary paratext that corresponds, as a framing, to the emergent frame of the artwork. – In E. T. A. Hoffmann’s capriccio Prinzessin Brambilla, the central event is the protagonists’ awakening in a humorous state of mind. This event is described as an event of emergence. At the same time, the narration’s paratext starts a ‘demonic’ play of masks with the reader, a play similar to the one the protagonists in the narration can only master by ways of humor. It is thus indicated that the reader will have to come to a humorous state of mind in order to cope with this capriccio. In pointing at this consequence, however, the paratextual framing not only addresses the text to a specific kind of reader. The capriccio also explicitly aims to reflect the reader’s humorous subjectivity and thus addresses the emergence of its own humorous frame of existence – which I suggest to take for the emergent frame of the capriccio as an autonomous piece of art.

This paper considers a rather specific form of textual framing, but it also asks, on a more general level, about the function of explicit fram-ing in autonomous art. As the example I propose to elaborate on, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s “Capriccio” Prinzessin Brambilla (1821), to some degree shares my interest in the frame of art in general, I will not only focus on its (para-)textual structures, but consider some intermedial aspects as well.

Prinzessin Brambilla makes use of a paratextual element which neither Hoffmann scholars nor paratext specialists have yet taken proper notice of. It provides short ‘abstracts’ for each chapter that are positioned between the heading and the actual beginning of the chap-ter’s text (see Illustration 1).

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Illustration 1 (from Hoffmann 1821)

I will more specifically focus on these sections later in this paper but, in order to give an idea of my concern, I want to question whether what we see here actually is a paratext. In Genette’s definition1, the

1 Macksey 1997 gives a very useful overview of Genette’s book and of his works in general. The concept of the paratext has been widely acknowledged by literary schol-ars, as entries in several recent dictionaries can show (e.g. Moeninghoff 1996/2001, Wolf 1998, Pethes 2000, Grüttemeier 2003). It has been applied to literary (e.g. King 1992, Laudano 1995, Retsch 2000) as well as non-literary media (e.g. Böhle 1997, Bleicher 2001, Böhnke/Swithee et al. 2001, Stanitzek 2003) and integrated into the larger context of communication theory (Baecker 2004, Stanitzek 2004).

(Paratextual) Framing: Hoffmann’s Prinzessin Brambilla 265

paratext consists of separable units of ‘text’ which provide the framing of another text. It presents the text and guarantees its unity as well as the unity of its meaning as intended “de l’auteur et de ses alliés” (Genette 1987/2002: 8)2. As a “Threshold of Interpretation”3, the paratext is constitutive of the text4, while at the same time it is “fon-damentalement hétéronome, auxiliaire, voué au service d’autre chose qui constitue sa raison d’être” (ibid.: 17)5. With regard to this defini-tion, an abstract can be paratextual if two conditions are met: formally, that is, by layout, it must be strictly separable from the proper text; but it must also explicitly relate to the text as some kind of authorial comment, or at least, there must be a notable difference between two agencies of speech, the one framing the other. This gives my question a different turn: can we say that the ‘abstracts’ in Prinzessin

Brambilla, which, as we can see, meet the first condition, frame the narration in a way that paratexts frame a text? Or do we face a more complex form of interaction between the framing and the framed?

To answer these questions and in order to provide tools for my analysis, I will first elaborate on the concepts of frame and framing. In a second part, I will demonstrate how Hoffmann’s narration chal-lenges the reader’s ability to give it a consistent frame. The third part of my paper finally asks for the function of the abstracts. This will lead to a hypothesis on how the frame of art is addressed in a move-ment initiated by the framing of the text.

1.

In order to give a precise definition of frame, I will use Wolf’s studies on narrative frames. Wolf defines the frame as follows:

2 “by the author and his allies” (Genette 1997: 2).

3 This is the subtitle of the English translation of Genette’s book.

4 This is stated explicitly: “on peut sans doute avancer qu’il n’existe pas, et qu’il n’a jamais existé, de texte sans paratexte” (Genette 1987/2002: 9f.).

5 “fundamentally heteronomous, auxiliary, and dedicated to the service of some-thing other than itself that constitutes its raison d’être” (Genette 1997: 12).

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‘Frame’ is here generally understood as the sum of various factors that influence and predetermine discursive exchanges, contribute to their coherence and mean-ingfulness and distinguish specific discursive exchanges from other possible ones. (Wolf 1999: 98)

Furthermore, Wolf suggests a difference between the frame and fram-ings, which he defines as “the signallings of, or ‘keys’ to, frames” (ibid.: 99). The first definition considers two aspects: it talks, first, about a variety of elements the frame consists of and, second, about some kind of delimitation and coherence which is the frame’s effect.

I will give Wolf’s definitions a specific turn which may enable us to see what the metaphor of the frame as a “sum” implies with regard to the framing. Is the frame really what emerges from just summing up the “various factors” the frame consists of? Or may we also use another metaphor and say that a frame is more than the sum of the parts which constitute it?

In order to reformulate this question, I will make use of Luhmann’s concept of emergence. A phenomenon is called emergent if, on the one hand, its existence clearly depends on certain factors one can name and distinguish, but, on the other hand, the very fact of its appearance cannot be causally determined by these factors6. To talk about emergence may thus be a more accurate way of expressing what we mean when we say that a whole is more than the sum of its parts. In my paper, I will examine frames as emergent phenomena. And con-sidering emergent frames, the first question to ask is: how does the frame itself work and which are its effects, rather than: how can the emergence of the frame be explained by the structure of the framing?

6 Luhmann introduces the term in order to describe how social systems are, on the one hand, dependent upon psychic systems and, on the other hand, self-organized: the social system (that is: society) is considered to be “eine emergente Ordnung […], die bedingt ist durch die Komplexität der sie ermöglichenden Systeme, die aber nicht da-von abhängt, daß diese Komplexität auch berechnet und kontrolliert werden kann” (Luhmann 1984/1996: 157). On a more general level, one can follow: “Emergenz ist demnach nicht einfach Akkumulation von Komplexität, sondern Unterbrechung und Neubeginn des Aufbaus von Komplexität.” (ibid.: 44) For the epistemological setting of Luhmann’s theory, especially for the restricted relevance of causality, see ibid.: 647ff.


As I ask about emergent frames, I have to provide a definition of the frame that gives an answer to this first question. For reasons of theoretical coherence, I will do so in terms of Luhmann’s theory of observation. As a consequence of this theoretical decision, the follow-ing specifications do not give a taxonomy of frames in order to clas-sify Hoffmann’s narration. The concepts developed here rather focus on how one can relate back to forms used by preceding observations, for example to frames.

As stated above, a frame’s effect is some kind of delimitation. More specifically, I want to argue that the usage of a frame implicates a differentiation between an inside and an outside. But how does this difference determine how we can refer to either the inside or the out-side? Let us take the example of a painting which hangs on a blue wall. If we want to discuss the painting ‘as such’, we will neglect the color of the wall. As soon as we ask whether the color of the wall fits the colors of the painting, we ignore the frame’s effect although we may still take the framing into account. As long as the frame of the painting as a representation is in effect, the color of the wall does not make a difference with respect to our observation of the painting. At this moment, the blue wall does not have any informational value.

In Luhmann’s theory of observation, one of the most important questions is how the observations we make delimit the possibility of making further observations. The concept of ‘form’ is central to Luh-mann’s answer to this question. A form is a two-sided difference whose boundary allows us to indicate one side as the internal side. Furthermore, and that is decisive for my argument, there are two pos-sibilities of dealing with the external side:

Die durch eine (irgendeine) Festlegung erzeugte Unterscheidung bietet auf ihrer anderen Seite eine doppelte Möglichkeit. Man kann die andere Seite in ihrem Un-bestimmtsein als ‘unmarked space’ belassen. Auch dann kann man die unmarkier-te Seite durch ein Kreuzen der Grenze zwar erreichen, kommt aber dort nicht wei-ter und findet bei der Rückkehr alles so vor, wie man es verlassen hatte. Wenn man dagegen auf der anderen, nicht festgelegten Seite der Form eine weitere Form sucht und bezeichnet, kann man von dort aus zurückkehren und findet den

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Ausgangspunkt verändert vor. Er ist jetzt die andere Seite der anderen Seite. (Luhmann 1995/1998: 53)7

In our example, when one first looks at the painting, then at the blue wall, and then returns to the painting, there are two possibilities: either, the painting has not changed – which is the case as long as the frame of representation is in effect; or we notice that we are now deal-ing not just with a painting but with a painting in front of a blue wall, a constellation which may or may not meet our ideas of inside decora-tion. A ‘frame’ can thus be defined as a difference between an inside and an outside which only allows us to interrelate observations we make on the inside: any external observation will not make a differ-ence to what we perceive under the auspices of the frame8.

In my paper, I will ask how the capriccio’s framing interrelates with its possible frames. For even given the case that one is dealing with an emergent frame, one can ask for the status of the framing, once the frame is installed. This question is of particular relevance if one considers paratexts which are always part of the framing of a text.

Genette’s introductory statements on the paratext already show that what we are facing here is a rather complex and ambivalent phe-nomenon. The paratext is a “‘[z]one indécise’ [Lejeune, T. D.] entre le dedans et le dehors, elle-même sans limite rigoureuse, ni vers l’intérieur […] ni vers l’extérieur” (Genette 1987/2002: 2)9. As a zone

7 “Regarding its external side, the distinction generated by an arrangement (of any kind) entails a twofold possibility. One can leave this side undetermined as an ‘un-marked space’. One might still reach the unmarked side by crossing the boundary, but one would get nowhere, and upon return, everything would be the same as before. If, however, one looks for another form at the undetermined side and marks this form, then one can return to the beginning and find it changed. It is now the other side of the other side.” (Luhmann 2000: 30)

8 One could argue that a frame suspends the validity of Spencer Brown’s “law of crossing” which says: “The value of a crossing made again is not the value of the crossing”, or: “for any boundary, to recross is not to cross” (George Spencer Brown, qtd. in Luhmann 1995/1998: 62, note 85).

9 “‘undefined zone’ [Lejeune, T. D.] between the inside and the outside, a zone without any hard and fast boundary on either the inward side […] or the outward side” (Genette 1997: 2).


“entre texte et hors-texte, une zone non seulement de transition, mais de transaction” (ibid.)10, the paratext is part of neither the one nor the other. Seen from the text, it belongs to the general ‘off-text’ or con-text, while seen from this context, it belongs to the text. Once the frame is in effect, the framing needs to be excluded from what it frames, and yet, at the same time, it is somehow included – which renders the authorial status of the literary paratext at least question-able. One will have to ask whether the paratext can thus be called a parergon in the Kantian sense or in the sense Derrida’s reading of the Kritik der Urteilskraft has given the concept (cf. Derrida 1978/1999), that is, something attached to a work, or ergon, that, even though it is not a necessary attribute to it, still proves not to be detachable11. Is this the case with the paratextual framing of Hoffmann’s capriccio, or maybe even with all kinds of manifest framing in autonomous art? And might one therefore even try to define the framing by the fact that it is not detachable from the framed even though it is not a substantial part of it?

2.

Before trying to answer the question how the abstracts frame the nar-rative of Prinzessin Brambilla, I have to give an overview of what the narration is about12. For even though it will prove to be almost impos-sible to provide a consistent summary of the capriccio, it is important to see why.

10 “between text and off-text, a zone not only of transition but also of transaction” (ibid.).

11 Kant defines the parergon as “was nicht in die ganze Vorstellung des Gegenstan-des als Bestandstück innerlich, sondern nur äußerlich als Zutat gehört und das Wohl-gefallen des Geschmacks vergrößert” (Kant 1790/1995: 142).

12 For a very convincing analysis of the narration’s rather complex and sometimes confusing structures see Nehring 1971/1995. Nehring’s approach avoids the difficul-ties the influential study of Strohschneider-Kohrs 1960 encounters (369ff.; cf., e.g., Feldges/Stadler 1986: 125ff.). Sdun 1961 reconstructs the spatial and temporal struc-tures of the narrated world in detail (cf. 42ff., 119ff.).

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Basically, the only passages in the narration which do not immedi-ately make us raise questions concerning their ‘ontological’ status within the narrated world are the beginning and the end. In the begin-ning we see Giacinta Soardi, “eine junge Putzmacherin” (Hoffmann 1821/1985: 770)13 (as she is called in the abstract), working on a cos-tume dress she has to finish that night for the Roman carnival that is to start the following day. Pushed by Beatrice (who is some kind of gov-erness to her), Giacinta tries on the dress, which is supposedly meant for a high-class lady. In precisely that moment, her lover, the idle and untalented actor Giglio Fava, enters the room and shortly takes her for the “Traumbild” (ibid.: 777)14 which he has encountered the night before in his dream and which he has been told is the Princess Bram-billa. As both Giglio and Giacinta express their conviction that they deserve a better partner than the other is, they part in anger, and the carnival begins. In the end, we see the two protagonists united again. One year has passed; they have become married and are now famous for their communal play in the traditional commedia dell’arte. In the broad middle part of the narration, we mostly follow Giglio trying to find the Princess Brambilla. He assumes that she is actually present in Rome, looking for her fiancé, the Assyrean Prince Chiapperi. The Prince, as Giglio is told, is in trouble: after he has undergone a sur-gery, “kam er sich selbst, er wußte nicht wie, abhanden” (ibid.: 784)15. Giacinta, on the other hand, is convinced that the Prince will finally choose her to be his bride, just as the Princess will choose Giglio. In the course of the events, Giglio at some point starts believing that he himself is the Prince. And although it is not stated explicitly in the text, we have good reasons to think that in the end Giglio and Giacinta

13 “a young milliner” (Hoffmann 1992: 120).

14 “dream-vision” (ibid.: 126).

15 “he somehow or other mislaid himself” (ibid.: 132).


are successfully reunited in that they take themselves to be the Prince and the Princess16.

The case of the Assyrean Prince can be considered a first hint at the fact that the central problem articulated in the story is a problem of subjectivity17. The final scene of the middle part provides another hint. It describes how Princess Brambilla and Prince Chiapperi, whom we may take for Giglio and Giacinta, recognize themselves in the mirror of a fountain: “Doch wie sie sich in dem See erblickten, da erkannten

sie sich erst.” (ibid.: 906)18 Obviously, the narration asks about the possibilities of a particular form of self-recognition19. This becomes more evident when one considers the two other subplots Nehring has distinguished in his very convincing reconstruction of the story (see

16 As Scheffel 1997: 129f. points out, a more extensive summary of the narration would have to take into account the considerable differences between Giglio’s and Giacinta’s developments.

17 A very original reconstruction of this problem is given in Wellbery’s recent read-ing of the narration as a rite de passage, that is, as a ritual that guides the protagonists through an extended liminal phase of confusion to help them gain a new status in life. Wellbery goes back to Arnold van Gennep’s introduction of the term in ethnology and shows how von Gennep formulates a “differenztheoretischen Funktionalismus” avant la lettre. The rite de passage, Wellbery describes “als eine anthropologische Grundfigur [...], die überall dort auftritt, wo das Unüberbrückbare – die Kluft einer kategorialen Unterscheidung – nichtdestoweniger überbrückt werden muß” (Wellbery 2005: 319). He shows very convincingly that the capriccio executes a “paradigmati-sche Entfaltung der Schwelle, als Freisetzung des narrativen Potentials von Liminali-tät” (325). It is rather striking that the events recounted in Hoffmann’s narration are mostly congruent with the typical events the rites de passage consist of, as Wellbery shows.

18 “on seeing themselves in the lake, they knew themselves for the first time” (Hoff-mann 1992: 233).

19 Strohschneider-Kohrs 1960 (362ff.) and Preisendanz 1963 (especially 47ff.), both very influential studies, start out in identifying this specific form of self-recognition or self-reflection with either the concept of romantic irony as described, for example, by Friedrich Schlegel (cf. Strohschneider-Kohrs), or the concept of humor, as described by Jean Paul, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel or Friedrich Solger (cf. Preisendanz). I will follow Preisendanz’ suggestion since I consider a moment of reconciliation, which is central rather for humor than for irony, to be constitutive for the form of subjectivity that Hoffmann’s narration deals with. – For an alternative, but also very striking analysis on self-recognition in the capriccio, using Schopenhauer, see Mühlher 1958.

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Nehring 1971/1995). The reconciliation of the two lovers is only possible with the help of the mountebank Celionati, who is not only the director of the events around Giglio and Giacinta, but is also – and this is the second line of action – engaged in a conflict with the tragedian Chiari. Celionati opposes the plain tragedy Chiari is pro-moting, and if he wants to realize his plan to reform the Roman thea-ter20, he is in need of a couple with a rather specific talent:

In der kleinen Welt, das Theater genannt, sollte nämlich ein Paar gefunden wer-den, das nicht allein von wahrer Phantasie, von wahrem Humor im innersten be-seelt, sondern auch imstande wäre, diese Stimmung des Gemüts objektiv wie in einem Spiegel zu erkennen und so ins äußere Leben treten zu lassen, daß sie auf die große Welt, in die jene kleine Welt eingeschlossen, wirke wie ein mächtiger Zauber. (Hoffmann 1821/1985: 910)21

The commedia dell’arte is supposed to become a mirror through which the audience will find to a humorous state of mind. In the third line of action, the final scene between Giglio and Giacinta is prefig-ured. In the mystic kingdom of Urdar – which is referred to within intradiegetic narrations – King Ophioch and Queen Liris have been rescued from a state of melancholy by looking into the mirror of the well of Urdar: “O! – wir lagen in öder, unwirtbarer Fremde in schwe-ren Träumen und sind erwacht in der Heimat – nun erkennen wir uns

20 Eilert 1977 reads the capriccio as a parody of Goethe’s “Regeln für Schauspieler” (155ff.) and reconstructs the anti-classicist theatrical program Hoffmann unfolds. Sdun 1961 shows how the narration follows a comedy structure, while Mühlher 1958 calls it “die auf den Kopf gestellte – Tragödie, abgebrannt als ein Feuerwerk von Witz” (24). For the allusions to the development of the Italian theater (e.g. Gozzi, Chiari), see the commentary in Hoffmann 1821/1985: 1142ff. The importance of the theatrical in the capriccio becomes obvious right in the opening scene which has been read as a parody of the opening scene of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (cf. Wellbery 2005: 321ff.).

21 “[I]t was necessary to find, in a little world known as the theatre, a couple of people who were not only animated by true imagination, true inward humour, but were also capable of recognizing this state of mind objectively, as though in a mirror, and of introducing it into external life in such a way that it should have the effect of a powerful spell upon the great world which surrounds the little world.” (Hoffmann 1992: 236)


in uns selbst und sind nicht mehr verwaiste Kinder!” (ibid.: 825)22

However, after their death, the well of Urdar has lost its “Spiegel-helle” (ibid.: 859)23, and the Princess of Urdar, Mystilis, has been turned into a “Porzellan-Püppchen” (ibid.: 863)24. In order to bring her back to life, a couple of persons are required who recognize them-selves as themselves, just like King Ophioch and Queen Liris. In the final scene, at the very moment the Princess Brambilla and Prince Chiapperi find and recognize themselves – presumably as being Gig-lio and Giacinta – the mystic land of Urdar is presented as ‘real’: in-side the palace of Celionati, who turns out to be a formerly missed Prince, the well of Urdar appears, and with it the Princess Mystilis. At the same time, within all the three subplots an important goal has been accomplished, which shows that they have all been dealing with a similar problem25.

22 “Oh, we were lying and dreaming sad dreams in a dismal, inhospitable foreign region, and have woken to find ourselves at home. Now we recognize ourselves in ourselves, and are no longer orphan children.” (Ibid.: 166)

23 “glassy clarity” (ibid.: 195).

24 “china doll” (ibid.: 233).

25 Nehring sums it up as follows: “Alle drei Ziele laufen aber auf eins hinaus: auf den Triumph des Humors, der den Sieg davonträgt über unfruchtbare Erstarrung, fal-sches Pathos und leere Eitelkeit.” (1971/1995: 167) More specifically, one could argue that there is a relation of functional equivalence between the three subplots. Wellbery (2005) shows that all three deal with the same “Bezugsproblem[...]” (328) which gives each of them coherence and lets it come to some kind of conclusion: “Die für die Liminalität charakteristische Paradigmatisierung öffnet einen semanti-schen Raum, in dem die drei Problembereiche aufeinander bezogen werden und sich deswegen gegenseitig vertreten können.” (328-329) In the end of the middle part, the humorous reconciliation of contradictory terms proves to be functionally equivalent with regard to all three problems: “Durch die liminale Stereoskopie wird auch der Fluchtpunkt kenntlich, an dem die drei Bezugsprobleme konvergieren. Es handelt sich um die Figur von Subjektivität. [...] Diese Figur hat ihre besondere Signatur nicht dar-in, daß sie den Widerspruch endgültig aufhebt, sondern vielmehr darin, daß sie ihn aushält, und zwar in der Erfahrung von Liminalität. Dadurch bewährt sich ästhetische Subjektivität in Hoffmanns Texten, daß sie ihre eigene Paradoxie: nur als anderes sich selbst sein zu können, durchspielt. Der Name, den diese Subjektivitätsfigur bei Hoff-mann trägt, lautet Humor.” (329)

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It is important to note that not only the narration unfolds an ex-tremely complex network of motivational links26, but that there are also numerous apparent gaps in it which one has to bridge in order to come to such a clear reconstruction of the plot. There are some events one will simply have to consider as “[w]underbar[]” (ibid.: 790)27, as the narrator puts it. Furthermore, there is a lot of contradictory infor-mation given by the characters which is not clarified by the narrator28. The narrator even suggests that “in einem Ding, das sich zwar Capric-cio nennt, das aber einem Märchen so auf ein Haar gleicht, als sei es selbst eins”29, parts of the action might actually take place only in the characters’ imagination: “Es darf dir, vielgeliebter Leser, nicht be- 26 This is especially emphasized by Strohschneider-Kohrs 1960, Kremer 1993 and Liebrandt 1996. The most extensive and most detailed account of the capriccio’s mo-tivational links is given by the rather early, but still very valuable article by Mühlher 1958. – Kremer 1995 reads the text’s carnivalesque play of masks with Bakhtin’s theory of the carnival, whereas Sasse 2001, using Iser’s triad of the Real, the Imagin-ary and the Fictive, points out that Bakhtin’s model cannot account for the overall structure of the narration. Kaiser 1997 reads Hoffmann’s capriccio as an answer to Goethe’s recount of the Roman Carnival in Italienische Reise: “Wenn Das römische Karneval als unausgesprochene Wette Goethes gelten kann, am widerstrebenden Ge-genstand des Karnevals die in Rom gewonnene klassizistische Position noch unter ex-tremen Bedingungen zu bewähren, so kann die Prinzessin Brambilla als Wette Hoff-manns gelten, daß es gelingen müßte, dem Karnevalsgeschehen einen Ausdruck zu verschaffen, der sowohl im Stofflich-Thematischen als auch in Sprache, Bildlichkeit und Komposition die ursprüngliche Aufhebung der gewohnten Ordnung angemesse-ner als Goethe durchscheinen läßt.” (232)

27 “[w]oundrous” (Hoffmann 1992: 138).

28 For example, when Giglio is in search of Giacinta in some part of the carniva-lesque action, he is told that she has moved out from the place she used to live at before. He then finds Beatrice, who makes him believe that Giacinta has been arrested because she was not able to provide a substitute for the bloodstained dress Master Bescapi had given her for sewing – who of course denies ever having given her this order. It then turns out that Giacinta has spent the very night Giglio has slept in Bes-capi’s house in a room next to his. Later, she has returned to her old place, and all the confusion of the in-between is never mentioned again. – Only one contradiction in the narration has to be attributed to the narrator: at the end of the first chapter, the Prin-cess Brambilla arises from a bottle of wine in the form of “ein feiner rötlicher Duft” (Hoffmann 1821/1985: 789), which in the very next chapter is referred to as “de[r] bläuliche[] Duft der Weinflasche” (ibid.: 790).

29 “something that may call itself a capriccio, but in fact resembles a fairy-tale as closely as though it were one” (Hoffmann 1992: 170).


fremdlich erscheinen, […] wenn der Schauplatz manchmal in das eig-ne Innere der auftretenden Gestalten verlegt wird.” (Ibid.: 829)30 In saying this, the narrator refers to the fact that the reader’s ability of situational framing is to some degree challenged by the narration. In many passages, it is difficult to coherently frame what is said to be happening. Most of the time, however, these difficulties can somehow be eliminated, even though the narrator does not seem to be very sup-portive.

There is but one gap in the story which is of a different quality. From the beginning the narrator does not take full responsibility for the information he provides in that he claims to be only reconstructing “die abenteuerliche Geschichte von der Prinzessin Brambilla gerade so […], wie er sie in Meister Callots kecken Federstrichen angedeutet fand” (ibid.: 790)31. This source finally dries up: “Meister Callot wäre der Einzige, der darüber fernere Auskunft geben könnte” (ibid.: 912)32. Moreover, directly after having seen “[w]ie einer [Giglio, T. D.] tanzend [probably with Giacinta or the Princess Brambilla, T. D.] zum Prinzen [Prince Chiapperi, T. D.] wurde” (ibid.: 870)33, we en-counter the following passage:

In dem höchst merkwürdigen Originalcapriccio, dem der Erzähler genau nach-arbeitet, befindet sich hier eine Lücke. Um musikalisch zu reden, fehlt der Über-gang von einer Tonart zur anderen, so daß der neue Akkord ohne alle gehörige Vorbereitung losschlägt. Ja man könnte sagen, das Capriccio bräche ab mit einer unaufgelösten Dissonanz. Es heißt nehmlich, der Prinz (es kann kein andrer ge-meint sein, als Giglio Fava, der dem Giglio Fava den Tod drohte) sei plötzlich von entsetzlichem Bauchgrimmen heimgesucht worden, welches er Pulcinellas Gerichten zugeschrieben, dann aber, nachdem ihn Celionati mit Liquor anodynus bedient, eingeschlafen, worauf ein großer Lärm entstanden. – Man erfährt weder,

30 “You must not be surprised […], if the action of the story is at times transferred to the inner lives of its characters.” (Ibid.: 170).

31 “the extraordinary tale of Princess Brambilla just as he found it suggested by the bold strokes of Master Callot’s pen” (ibid.: 138).

32 “Master Callot is the only person who could provide further information.” (Ibid.: 238)

33 “How someone became a Prince while dancing” (ibid.: 204).

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was dieser Lärm bedeutet, noch wie der Prinz, oder Giglio Fava, nebst Celionati aus dem Palast Pistoja gekommen.

Die fernere Fortsetzung lautet ungefähr wie folgt: [...]. (Ibid.: 877)34

From this point on, the narrator explicitly delegates the identification of the characters to the reader, and he himself only provides sugges-tions: “Der geneigte Leser kennt diese Maske schon aus dem ersten Kapitel und weiß daher, daß dahinter niemand anders stecken kann, als Giglio Fava.” (Ibid.: 877)35 The next thing that is recounted is the fight between this character and the “toller Capitan Pantalon” (ibid.)36, who kills the person whom we are suggested to take for Giglio. In a conversation which takes place shortly after that, we learn that Capitan Pantalon calls himself Prince Chiapperi, and “daß die Leute, als sie den vermeintlichen Leichnam aufheben und forttragen wollten, nur ein hübsches, aus Pappendeckel geformtes Modell in Händen hatten”37, which they find to be “mit Rollen aus den Trauerspielen eines gewissen Abbate Chiari erfüllt” (ibid.: 889)38. In the final scene of the carnivalesque action, there is also only a suggestion to take the main protagonists for “der assyrische Prinz Cornelio Chiapperi” (ibid.: 901)39 and the Princess Brambilla. Celionati is now introduced as

34 “At this point, there is a gap in the remarkable original capriccio which the narra-tor is meticulously copying. To speak in musical terms, the transition from one key to the next is missing, so that a new chord begins, with none of the requisite preparation. Indeed one might say that the capriccio breaks off with an unresolved dissonance. For we are told that the Prince (meaning presumably none other than Giglio Fava, who was threatening to kill Giglio Fava), was suddenly afflicted by a frightful stomach-ache which he attributed to Pulcinella’s cooking; after Celionati had provided him with liquor anodynus, however, he fell asleep, whereupon a loud noise began. We are told neither what this noise signified, nor how the Prince, or Giglio Fava, along with Celionati, left the Pistoia Palace. The next instalment runs more or less as follows.” (Ibid.: 209-210)

35 “The kind reader will recognize this mask from Chapter 1 and therefore knows that it could conceal none other than Giglio Fava.” (Ibid.: 210)

36 “eccentric Captain Pantaloon” (ibid.).

37 “that when people were about to lift the supposed corpse and carry it away, they found only a handsome cardboard model” (ibid.: 219).

38 “crammed with sheets from the tragedies of a certain Abbate Chiari” (ibid.).

39 “the Assyrean Prince Chiapperi” (ibid.: 229).


“Fürst Bastianello di Pistoja”: “Daß dieser kein anderer war, als eben der Marktschreier Celionati, darf kaum gesagt werden.” (Ibid.: 903)40

It is only after this rupture that the solution of the story’s central problem is told41. This fact produces an irresolvable uncertainty: for the only subplot that comes to a definitive conclusion in the final scene is the subplot dealing with the kingdom of Urdar. Only the couple of Princess and Prince are shown in the moment the solution of their problem actually takes place, and at this moment, the mystic world becomes real, or at least: is treated as real by all the characters, and reaches its fulfillment. With regard to the other two subplots, we only learn in the epilogue that they have successfully been brought to an end. The carnival and the complex play of masks which the pro-tagonists (and the reader) face thus only provide a veil-like surface behind which we can suspect a central event to take place, about which, if we take the above-mentioned rupture seriously, at least no immediate account is given.

This raises the question of how we are informed about this event. In the first part of the story of Urdar, told by Celionati, the central character points out the principle according to which Ophioch and Liris have overcome their melancholy42.

Der Gedanke zerstörte die Anschauung und losgerissen von der Mutter Brust wankt in irrem Wahn, in blinder Betäubtheit der Mensch heimatlos umher, bis des

40 “It need hardly be said that the latter was none other than the mountebank Celionati.” (Ibid.: 231)

41 As far as I can see, research has not given much attention to this fact. In the fol-lowing, I will show that its consequences are, however, decisive. Only Scheffel 1997 (cf. also Scheffel 1992) bases parts of his study on narrative self-reflexivity in Hoff-mann’s capriccio on this second ‘rupture’: the “Rahmenüberschreitung” (Scheffel 1997: 139), which takes place as the world of Urdar becomes ‘real’, he considers the first of two significant metalepses. The second is given in Celionati speaking about the fact that the other characters and himself are only fiction. – For a broader concept of such transgressions as metalepses, which takes account of the frame of fictionality, see the article by Remigius Bunia in this volume.

42 The significance of melancholy for the capriccio is highlighted by Starobinski 1966.

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Gedankens eignes Spiegelbild dem Gedanken selbst die Erkenntnis schafft, daß er ist. (Ibid.: 825-826)43

In the state of melancholy, when it is not yet capable of humorous self-recognition, the subject is aware of the fact that it has lost an immediate access to the world and that there is a categorical difference between the self and the environment. This confronts the subject with the experience of contingency – which apparently it only attributed to the environment, with the result that the subject feels deprived of its origin. In this situation, humor steps in as

die wunderbare […] Kraft des Gedankens, seinen eignen ironischen Doppeltgän-ger zu machen, an dessen seltsamlichen Faxen er die seinigen und […] die Faxen des ganzen Seins hienieden erkennt und sich daran ergetzt [...]. (Ibid.: 826)44

By ways of humor, the subject gets aware of the contingency of the difference that its existence introduces into the world and upon which, at the same time, its identity is based. This insight can compensate the melancholic subject’s insecurity in that it shows how only on the basis of a contingent origin the subject is able to give the world consistence. This is how the subject gains autonomy, as it is formulated in the myth of Urdar: humor supplies thought with the knowledge, “daß er in dem tiefsten, reichsten Schacht, den ihm die mütterliche Königin [Nature, T. D.] geöffnet, als Herrscher gebietet, muß er auch als Vasall gehorchen.”45 (Ibid.: 826)46

43 “Thought destroys intuition, and man, once torn away from his mother’s breast, reels around without a home, prey to mad illusions, blind and insensate, until the veritable mirror of thought supplies thought itself with the knowledge that he is”(Hoffmann 1992: 167).

44 “the wondrous power, […] by which thought creates its own ironic double, whose strange antics give delight by revealing the antics […] of thought itself and of all sublunary being” (Ibid.).

45 “that in the deepest and richest mine which the maternal Queen [Nature, T. D.] has opened up to him, he commands as a lord, even if he must obey as a vassal” (ibid.: 167).

46 For accounts of the philosophical notions of humor around 1800 see Preisendanz 1963: 19ff. as well as Preisendanz 1974, Preisendanz 2000 and Hörhammer 2001. – The rather abstract definition of humor that I have provided in this section is basically congruent with these accounts, but formulated in a way that will allow me to relate questions of subjectivity to questions of framing and art.


The conditions and the effects of such self-recognition can be fur-ther analyzed if we consider a statement of Celionati. At one point, Celionati talks about the fact that all the characters are only the inven-tion of an author and mentions,

daß der Dichter, […] dem wir, wollen wir wirklich existieren, dienstbar bleiben müssen, uns durchaus für unser Sein und Treiben keine bestimmte Zeit vorge-schrieben hat [...]. (Ibid.: 894)47

Remarks like these (see also ibid.: 89248, 911) not only render the narration an early example of metafiction (cf. Waugh 1984). They also provide an insight into what humorous self-reflection can achieve. As the readers of Hoffmann’s narration, we can say that Celionati’s statement is true. But within the narrative world, there is no means to verify it. In the narrative world, the characters do live in a “bestimmte Zeit”. They may somehow get aware of the fact that this could be different. But this insight seems to be the only surplus of knowledge they can gain from Celionati’s statement. Humor can thus not alter the subject’s ability to make observations of the world; it can only provide it with the knowledge that this ability depends on the contingent frame of its existence. The difference the subject introduces into the world can thus be described as the contingent boundary between everything that can be observed and interrelated by the subject, and an unmarked space whose inaccessibility is what enables the subject to make observations at all. This is what humor as “des Gedankens eignes Spiegelbild” can make us aware of.

It remains to be discussed what it means that in Hoffmann’s cap-riccio the emergence of a humorous state of mind as the central event of the story is not immediately recounted. We have seen how the oc-

47 “that the author […] whom we must obey if we really want to exist, has pre-scribed no particular time for us to live and have our being” (Hoffmann 1992: 223).

48 Celionati refuses to repeat a story which, as the reader knows, has already been told by someone else: “sollte ich alles jetzt noch einmal wiederholen, so würde das einer Person entsetzliche Langeweile erregen, die uns nie verläßt und sich auch in je-nem Collegio befand, mithin schon alles weiß. Ich meine nehmlich den Leser des Capriccio’s, Prinzessin Brambilla geheißen, einer Geschichte, in der wir selbst vor-kommen und mitspielen.” (Hoffmann 1821/1985: 892)

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currence of the event that differentiates the subject from its environ-ment remains contingent, that is, inexplicable in terms of causality. The same seems to be true for the occurrence of the humorous insight into this contingency: it can neither deliberately be induced nor con-trolled; it remains contingent to any observer. This is what the narra-tion makes us notice in that it interrupts its proper discourse. Any attempt to properly recount the exact circumstances of Giglio’s and Giacinta’s awakening in a humorous state of mind would necessarily be inadequate. It is in figural language only, that is, through masks, that we can learn about this event, and there is no means to substitute the figural recount by its proper meaning, for no such replacement could be sure to have used the right principle of substitution49.

3.

Let me return now to the abstracts and their function. It is obvious that they cannot be taken for consistent narrations, as the abstract to the first chapter shows (see Illustration 1):

Zauberische Wirkungen eines reichen Kleides auf eine junge Putzmacherin. – De-finition des Schauspielers, der Liebhaber darstellt. – Von der Smorfia italischer Mädchen. – Wie ein kleiner, ehrwürdiger Mann in einer Tulpe sitzend den Wis-senschaften obliegt und anständige Damen zwischen Maultier-Ohren Filet ma-chen. – Der Marktschreier Celionati und der Zahn des assyrischen Prinzen. – Himmelblau und Rosa. – Pantalon und die Weinflasche mit wunderbarem Inhalt. (Hoffmann 1821/1985: 770)50

49 The narration highlights this by rendering questionable the myth of Urdar, which provides the occasion to elaborate on the theory of humor. Celionati explicitly denies the myth’s figural dimension (cf. ibid.: 826-827). Later on, however, he confirms the allegorical interpretation one of the German artists has provided (cf. ibid.: 893) and is himself accused of talking allegorically (cf. ibid.: 896) – which he admits in the epilogue. What the narration thus points out is the fact that no replacement of any statement given in figural language can be sure to have used the right principle of substitution.

50 “The magical effect of a costly dress upon a young milliner. Definition of the actor who plays lovers. On the smorfia of Italian girls. How a venerable little man studies the sciences while sitting in a tulip, and how respectable ladies make lace between the ears of a mule. The mountebank Celionati and the tooth of the Assyrian Prince. Sky-blue and pink. Pantaloon and the winebottle with its wondrous contents.” (Hoffmann 1992: 120)


In a passage like this – and it is not the most extreme example – the reader does not find a coherence of characters, space and time that could make him think of it as a narration. To a great extent this is because the diegetic order of the events referred to remains opaque. There is, in other words, no framing that could give us directions on how to situate the events with respect to diegetic levels. If one tries to use the abstracts as a framing, one therefore has to consult the narra-tion in order to ‘frame the framing’.

Let us see, how the individual phrases assembled within the ab-stract to the first chapter relate to its text51: the first phrase may be regarded as a somewhat accurate description of the situation we face at the beginning of the chapter. Yet the second one functions as a comment on the narration, for what we find there is not a “Definition des Schauspielers, der Liebhaber darstellt”, but the description of an individual actor – whom the abstract thus indicates to be paradigmatic. The third phrase also alludes to a general phenomenon which, in this case, the text not only refers to in the description of an individual case, but which is also discussed on a more general level by the protagonist and the narrator. However, there is no way for the reader to know of

51 For the following, see also the reconstruction given in Kaiser 1997, the only text known to me that explicitly deals with the abstracts: “Während er [Goethe, T. D.] aber das Erzählgewebe aus deutlich voneinander getrennten Fäden spinnt und es dem Leser ermöglicht, ja ihn auffordert, auch komplizierte Strukturen nachzuvollziehen, zielt Hoffmann gerade darauf ab, ihn in ein – nicht minder artifizielles – Erzählchaos zu führen und in der Lektüreerfahrung ein Analogon zu Giglios Verwirrung, ja vorübergehendem Selbstverlust im karnevalistisch erregten Rom zu schaffen. Dies bezwecken insbesondere die längeren Abrisse, die er jeweils den durchnumerierten Kapiteln voranstellt. So hebt er zum ersten Kapitel informierend, einen möglichen erzählerischen Zusammenhang skizzierend an: [...], um alsbald aber in eine durch Zeugma und Parallelismus gesteigerte widersinnige Angabe überzugehen: [...], auf die dann, in einer Antiklimax drei weitere Parallelismen folgen: [...], in denen die Mitte zwischen dem vergleichsweise nüchternen informierenden Beginn und dem in Wunderbar-Widersinnige gesteigerten Mittelteil eingehalten wird.” Kaiser concludes: “Offensichtlich versucht Hoffmann, durch die karnevalistische Einebnung der Bedeutungshierarchien und -unterschiede, in unausgesprochenem Widerspruch gegen Goethes klassizistische Haltung, dem Karnevalschaos einen angemessenen Ausdruck zu verleihen.” (234) I will make use of Kaiser’s argument, but carry it one decisive step further.

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which relevance the “Smorfia italischer Mädchen” will be for the story. The following sentence refers to some apparently minor details of the action which are told in a flashback – a fact which, of course, cannot be guessed from the abstract. Furthermore, there is a contradiction: in the narration, there are some ladies making lace. But first, these ladies are not described as anständig (‘decent’), but only as being almost totally covered up and assumingly “die schönsten Damen” (ibid.: 781)52. And second, these ladies are riding on palfreys, not on mules, working on a cushion between the horses’ ears. What is being described here completely lacks any hint concerning how to integrate it into a coherent reconstruction of any action whatsoever. This is also true for the next phrase. It introduces another protagonist and provides the antithetical structure which also governs the two last phrases. Each of them refers to two details of the action which stand in a direct pragmatic relation to each other – for example, at one point, Giglio decides to put on “ein hübsches himmelblau seidnes Beinkleid […], dazu aber rosenfarbene Strümpfe” (ibid.: 788)53.

This reconstruction makes obvious that it is actually misleading to call the short sections in the beginning of the chapters ‘abstracts’. In assigning the individual phrases to sections of the chapter, I have im-plicitly taken them to be the titles54 of these sections, or at least mar-ginal glosses. They now seem like an assembly of intertitles which have just been taken from their proper place. In this respect, the con-structive principle of the abstracts is one of displacement. This prin-ciple, however, proves to be more complex in at least one case, where it is not possible to clearly separate the sections which two individual

52 “the most beautiful of ladies” (Hoffmann 1992: 129).

53 “a pretty pair of sky-blue silk breeches […] along with pink stockings” (ibid.: 135).

54 Cf. the section on titles in Genette 1987/2002: 59ff.; also Adorno 1962/1996, Derrida 1980, Rothe 1986. Not much work has been done on intertitles. One of the very few books concerning them is Wieckenberg 1969.


phrases refer to55. And the last phrase in the abstract of the fifth chap-ter only tells us about what is not told in this chapter: “Wie der ge-neigte Leser in diesem Kapitel nicht erfährt, was sich bei Giglios Tanz mit der unbekannten Schönen weiter begeben.” (Ibid.: 850)56

How can we integrate the intricate game the abstracts play (or the ‘dance’ they perform in re-figuring the narration57) into the text as a work of art? As the central rupture in the narrative process is de-scribed in terms of intermediality – musical terms are applied to a circle of pictures that is treated as a narration –, it may be helpful to look at the intermedial constellation the capriccio provides itself58. The relation between the narration and the abstracts is, in its complex-ity, similar to the one between the narration and its ‘illustrations’,

55 In the abstract to Chapter 6, we find the following entry: “Freimaurerei eines Mädchens und neu erfundener Flugapparat.” (Hoffmann 1821/1985: 870) Assum-ingly, this refers to a conversation between Giacinta and Beatrice, for we can tell what is meant by “neu erfundener Flugapparat”: “Du kannst es durchaus nicht unschicklich finden, wenn ich es dulde, daß der Prinz mich auf beide Schultern küßt; denn du siehst es ja, wie dann mir augenblicklich die schönsten, buntesten, gleißensten Schmetterlingsflügel herauswachsen und wie ich mich emproschwinge hoch – hoch in die Lüfte” (ibid.: 882) says Giacinta – which Beatrice considers to be “Torheiten” or “Einbildungen” (ibid.: 881). It may be that Giacinta’s reasoning – her ‘fancies’ – is what the term Freimaurerei refers to. Yet, the entry right before the one I have quoted also refers to a detail of the very situation within which this reasoning takes place.

56 “The reader fails to learn in this chapter what else happened when Giglio was dancing with the fair unknown.” (Hoffmann 1992: 187)

57 On the significance of dancing in Hoffmann’s narration see Slessarev 1970: 159f., Kremer 1993: 318ff., Kremer 1995 and Liebrandt 1996: 277ff., who read Hoffmann with Kleist and/or Schiller. The dance described in the sixth chapter is, so much for intermediality, presented as a dialogue.

58 Even though the earliest known capriccios are literary texts (cf. Hartmann 1973: 49f.), the capriccio was mainly a genre of music and the fine arts until the end of the 18th century. Especially in these arts, it has been considered a genre that paradoxically combines order and chaos (cf. Grimm 1968: 107) and has therefore functioned as a place where aesthetic autonomy could be unfolded avant la lettre (cf. Oesterle 1996, also Oesterle 1998, an essay which provides a striking “Skizze einer Kulturpoetik des Capriccio” [180]). In engaging questions of aesthetic autonomy within an intermedial setting, Hoffmann’s capriccio lays bare the genre’s constitutive structures. For ques-tions of genre in Hoffmann’s narration see also the commentary in Hoffmann 1821/ 1985: 1155f.

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which are themselves copies of originals taken from Callot’s circle Balli di Sfessania (1622). There is a mirror-like relation between the narration and the illustrations as well as between the illustrations and their originals: not only have the originals been inverted – a fact that is even commented on by the narrator who gives a reason for the fact that the two sword fighters in the image to Chapter 6 carry their swords in the left hand (see Illustration 2). Also, the illustrations and the narration give two versions, or reflections, of the same ‘story’ in different media, for the narrator claims that the illustrations are not only illustrations, but the actual source of the story – which histori-cally, they are not, for the original circle does not tell a story and is only brought into the shape it appears in by Hoffmann. It is evidently only through the narration that the illustrations gain any kind of narra-tive dimension.

Thus, neither of the two versions of the story can be considered the original, which reveals the fact that not only the representation of the central event, but the representation of the whole story maybe should be understood literally59.

This situation becomes even more complicated if one considers the abstracts. Evidently, they again refer to the narration only figuratively. In doing so, they display a broad variety of ways to replace textual ‘facts’ by figurative language and demonstrate how figurative trans-formation can destroy narrative coherence. Just as the illustrations do not provide the ‘real story’, although they are said to do so, the abstracts can only give a deficient version of the narration. On the whole, we face, first, a narration which demonstrates that it cannot

59 For a detailed reconstruction of Hoffmann’s use of Callot’s Circle see the com-mentary in Hoffmann 1821/1985: 1147ff., and Dieterle 1988. Schmidt 1999 demon-strates how the narration in its core deals with the difference between the textual and the pictorial: the central problem in all three narrative lines is a gap which can only be bridged in the momentary emergence of a self-reflective, somewhat ‘pictorial’ power: only the inverted image of one’s self provides the solution of this problem. The goal of the narration – if it wants to contribute to the aesthetic education of its reader – is thus to turn into an image. Paradoxically, it tries to do so in treating the illustrations as being of a genuinely narrative quality.


give a proper recount of the central event of its story, second, two re-presentations of this story of which it becomes clear that they cannot be taken literally, and, third, abstracts whose figurative summaries turn out to destroy the coherence of the narration.

Illustration 2 (from Hoffmann 1821)

This chain of figural replacements, or even displacements, shows that even though the abstracts may appear to provide an insufficient reflection of the narration, in the end they prove to be a mirror which is accurate in its blindness. As an encyclopedia of figural language, the abstracts provide a pandemonium of masks for what is narrated in the text, and in doing so they prefigure the structure of figural replace-ment that, in the narration, veils the central event of the emergence of

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humor. If the narration points out that humor is the only power that can reconcile us with the contingent play of masks the protagonists encounter, the abstracts start just such a demonic play with the reader. If in the narration the central event can only be recounted figuratively, the abstracts openly demonstrate the necessity of replacing them by proper terms. The reader, however, if he follows their demand to find their proper meaning, is guided into a narration which replaces figural description by nothing but again figural description.

Thus, if, on the one hand, this complex interrelation between the narration and its paratextual framing makes obvious that the text is just a demonic play of masks; and if, on the other hand, the narration points out that only by way of humor can one compensate the pure ex-ternal contingency this play of masks unfolds; then it can be inferred that the reader himself will have to acquire a humorous state of mind to be able to adequately read the text. The capriccio thus addresses itself to a reader who is in a specific mental state60. As far as this address is initiated by the abstracts, they may be considered to fulfill the function of a paratext in Genette’s sense: they aim at providing an adequate reading. However, as the narration is given on the precondi-tion that it will not be able to provide more than just an apostrophe or a blueprint of humorous subjectivity, the abstracts cannot pretend to be anything more than the origin of a movement that may or may not let the capriccio find its destination.

I would like to follow this argument just one step further. We have seen in the very beginning that the capriccio’s aesthetic effect, as I

60 This implicit addressing of the reader has been commented upon, for example, by Strohschneider-Kohrs 1960, Kremer 1993, Kremer 1995 and Schmidt 1999. Slessarev 1970 points out that the narration is mainly about the project of ‘aesthetic education’ (Schiller), but fails to notice the ruptures that are inherent in the process depicted. Wellbery (2005) concludes: “Der Leser ist es, der in die Hände des Erzähler-Scharla-tans gerät, dessen Sinnvertrauen erschüttert wird, der den Verzerrungen des Capric-cios ausgesetzt wird, der sich zu bewähren hat im Durchspielen der Schwellenparado-xie. Prinzessin Brambilla gestaltet sich zwar als rite de passage, aber der Leser ist der eigentliche, ja der einzige Initiand.” (334) One could also argue that the capriccio itself, as a work of art, is the addressee of this initiation.


have just tried to reconstruct it, is already described in the story with regard to the commedia dell’arte. As has been said, the theater was supposed to become a mirror through which the audience may find to a humorous state of mind. If we take this claim seriously, we can infer that the reader of the capriccio will not only have to be capable of humor. He is, moreover, supposed to find his own “ironischen Dop-peltgänger” in the mirror of the capriccio, and to recognize his own “seltsamlichen Faxen” in the capriccio’s ‘strange antics’. He is to ob-serve the capriccio as if it acted like himself. I can thus conclude, referring back to my characterization of humor: the reader will have to become aware of the fact that the capriccio introduces a contingent boundary into the world, indicating its internal side, that it can only arrange consistent observations on the condition that everything out-side its frame is excluded, and that it, at the same time, shows a self-reflexive awareness of these conditions of its framing in a humorous way. The capriccio thus calls for the reader to discover in it the frame of humorous existence. It aims not only to evoke, but also to reflect humorous subjectivity.

What the capriccio addresses is thus not only a reader in a certain mental state, but also its own status as a reflection of the reader’s humorous subjectivity. One can regard this as an implicit address of its own aesthetic autonomy61: as an autonomous work of art, the capriccio must constitute its own frame of existence62. It cannot do so,

61 The capriccio has very early been read as a reflection on the possibilities of art. Baudelaire called it “un catéchisme de haute esthétique” (qtd. from Kaiser 1997: 215). Strohschneider-Kohrs 1960 and Preisendanz 1963, in relating the text to contemporary aesthetic theory, have further developed this line of reading. For a rather recent reading of Hoffmann’s narrative texts as implicit aesthetic theories see Kremer 1993, Quack 1993, Liebrandt 1996.

62 For this concept of aesthetic autonomy see Luhmann 1990, especially 26ff. on the difference (and the interrelation) between the “Weltautonomie und Gesellschaftsauto-nomie” (27) of art.

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however, in just stating its independence. In order to be autonomous, it must act analogously to the humorous subject63.

My analysis has shown, how this ‘self-address’ of the capriccio as an autonomous piece of art is carried out in its framing structures. In this case, the framing is a parergon as a consequence of aesthetic autonomy: initially, it provides an external closure in that it makes the text distinguishable. However, it may also initiate an internal closure of the capriccio as a work of art. Starting from the external framing, the reader, if he is lucky, might finally find out that the movement taking place within the text and between the text, the paratext and the illustrations, has actually drawn a boundary by itself, a boundary that prevents interferences from the outside. In this moment, the frame of art will have emerged64.

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63 With this step, I take the argument a little further than Kremer 1993, who also talks about the capriccio in terms of movement. Whereas Kremer shows how the nar-ration disperses its “Sinnzuschreibungen […] zugunsten der Prozessualität des Tex-tes“, and how it opens its „Sinnfixierungen […] in Richtung auf die gleitende Signi-fikation des Textes” (323), I suggest that this movement is oriented – towards an aesthetically autonomous internal framing of the text.

64 For this form of “doppelte Schließung” see Luhmann 1995/1998, 53ff.: “Nach außen muß das Kunstwerk von anderen Dingen oder Ereignissen unterscheidbar sein, es darf sich nicht in die Welt verlieren. Nach innen schließt sich das Werk dadurch, daß jede Formsetzung einschränkt, was an weiteren Möglichkeiten übrigbleibt. Im Ef-fekt ist dann die innere Schließung die äußere Schließung, sie hält sich an den Rah-men, der als unüberschreitbar mitproduziert wird.” (53) See also Roberts 1992, Baecker 1996.


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Defamiliarized Initial Framings in Fiction

Werner Wolf

Defamiliarization, a frequent phenomenon in literature as well as in other arts and media, can apply to a plethora of devices, including framings. This essay explores some forms and functions of defamiliarized framings in fiction, in particular those of unusual initial framings. The starting point is an outline of the typical features of familiar framings: they are reliable and are subservient to the framed; they pre-cede the framed text and are clearly distinct from it. Major deviations from this familiar state are then discussed and illustrated with examples from fiction but also the visual arts: a) unreliable framings (which mislead by creating erroneous expectations); b) unrelated and parasitic framings (which are inflated to unusual proportions and possess a relative independence); c) displaced framings (which appear where one would not expect them or are conspicuously absent as in the case of ‘missing opening frames’); d) recursive framings; and e) metaleptic fram-ings (in which framing and framed become paradoxically confused). The manifold functions of such defamiliarized framings comprise an ironic playing with reader expectations, the laying bare of the fictionality of the text and the undermining of aesthetic illusion, as well as the foregrounding of the difference between reality and fiction and the deconstruction of this distinction.

1. Introduction: Familiar Framings

Defamiliarization, as the Russian formalists taught us in the early twentieth century, is a frequent phenomenon in literature – and this is also true in other arts and media. Virtually everything that is familiar, everything that has become conventionalized and is expected can be (or as the formalists said, even tends to become) an object of aesthetic defamiliarization. It certainly does not come as a surprise that this also applies to ‘framings’ – the subject of the present volume.

The terms ‘frame’ and ‘framing’, as used in the following, not only refer to the field of ‘frame stories’, where they most frequently occur in literary studies (cf., e.g., Williams 1998, ch. 3, and my contribution to this volume, “Framing Borders in Frame Stories”). Rather, frames,

as detailed in the “Introduction” to this volume, designate cognitive

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‘frames’; that is, interpretive (meta-)concepts (sometimes also called ‘scripts’ or ‘schemata’)1 applicable both to everyday situations and the arts and media. In the frequent case where they refer to communi-cation they have been called “metacommunicative [...] messages” (Bateson 1955/1972: 190) and include, with reference to literature, for example, the idea of fiction or the conventions of a particular genre. The principal function of such ‘frames’ is their role as interpretive guides of experience, cognition and communication: they orientate perception and govern understanding as well as regulate individual

concepts2. In conformity with the “Introduction”, ‘framings’, as op-posed to these abstract cognitive ‘frames’, are here conceived of as the physical codings of frames that occur in more or less prominent places. Although there is no experience, no signification and no com-munication without frames, there are still cases where no overt ‘fram-ing’ or explicit ‘keying’, as Erving Goffman (1974) called it, is neces-sary. In other, mostly unusual cases, such framings are, however, ne-cessary or at least customary. Literature as an ‘unusual’ mode of com-munication seems particularly in need of such explicit framing. In print-mediated fiction, on which I will concentrate here, explicit framings can appear in non-verbal form, as in cover illustrations; yet, the principal form is, of course, verbal: the most prominent type are paratexts, such as titles or the generic indication ‘a novel’, but in many cases literary possible worlds contain further, intratextual framings. Among these, the best known are framings of frame stories3. In the

temporal arts and media, initial framings are of particular importance, as they introduce (refer to, or produce) relevant frames at the outset of

1 The terminology is highly divergent in research; as opposed to scholars who use ‘frame’, ‘script’ and ‘schema’ as synonyms, there are others who differentiate among these terms; for details see also the “Introduction” to this volume.

2 For the distinction between ‘framing’ and cognitive ‘frames’ see Müller 1984: 45, Tannen 1993: 4, and Wolf 1999: 98f., as well as the “Introduction” to the present volume.

3 See my contribution to this volume “Framing Borders in Frame Stories”.

Defamiliarized Initial Framings in Fiction 297

the reception process and thus, as a rule, govern understanding in a more fundamental way than internal or closing framings.

In this essay, I propose to explore some forms and functions of de-familiarized framings, in particular of unusual initial framings in fic-tion, notably framing sections of frame stories but also paratextual and extratextual (narratorial) framings. This presupposes a further clarification, namely an answer to the question: what is the back-

ground to such defamiliarization, what are ‘familiar framings’ in the above sense?

There are two problems related to this question: the problem of historical relativism, and a generic or medial problem. As for the first, it must, of course, be borne in mind that expectations vary historically and culturally and that, consequently, ‘the familiar’ can be quite dif-ferent in different epochs and contexts. Therefore, I would like to note that the following remarks on defamiliarized framings in fiction are restricted to expectations predominantly shaped by the reading of more or less ‘realistic’ Western fiction since the eighteenth century. As for the painterly analogies which I would like to draw for illustra-

tion’s sake4, I will base expectations of the ‘familiar’ on the form of

the physical, usually ornamental framings (be they gilded as in Illus-

tration 1, or plain) which predominated in Western culture between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

4 Strictly speaking, the differentiation between initial and closing framings under-lying the present essay on literature as a temporal art does not apply to painterly frames as elements in a non-temporal art, and there is also a second dissimilarity be-tween the two media: the typical painterly (non-representational) frame differs semiotically as a symbolic sign from the picture as an assembly of iconic signs, while as a rule a textual framing does not semiotically differ from the framed, since both are made of symbolic signs. Nevertheless some basic analogies between painterly and lit-erary framings can be seen to exist. It should also be noted that the semiotic hetero-geneity of painterly frames and framed pictures as opposed to the homogeneity of framings in fiction with reference to the framed material is not an absolute one: paint-erly frames can in fact include iconic elements and to this extent be semiotically similar to the framed picture, while framings in fiction can also include, e.g., iconic cover illustrations, and can therefore semiotically differ from the framed text.

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Illustration 1: Franz von Stuck. “Frühling” [‘Spring’] (1912)

The second, ‘generic’ or medial problem refers to the general con-ception of literature, in particular to the question of whether deviation is perceived as such at all in literature, or whether it is really the norm in a text type or medium which has actually been termed “[un] contre-discours”, at least as far as literature since the nineteenth century is concerned (Foucault 1960: 59). My position here is that regardless of a strong tendency within literature (as well as within other arts and media) towards deviations, including the production of individual and innovative frames and framings as opposed to merely using, and re-ferring to, existing ones, these departures and innovations derive their saliency from the very fact that basic non-literary expectations con-

tinue to be ‘imported’ into the literary or artistic domain5. As for fram-

ings in fiction, this means that, basically, familiar framings – or at

5 This is also why most features of familiar framings (as special cases of discourse) appear to obey H. P. Grice’s (1975) conversational maxims.


least the expectations implicated by them – do not differ in essence from the framings of non-literary texts, nor from painterly frames to the extent that picture frames are analogous to textual framings. (Both framings are, for instance, similar in that they mark the difference be-tween an ‘inside’, to which special cognitive frames apply, and an out-side, where they do not apply.) All of these framings show at least four distinct features. In fiction, one could illustrate them with most framings of frame stories (as detailed in my contribution to this vol-ume “Framing Borders in Frame Stories”) but also with other fram-ings such as paratexts. It is in fact from this field that the following illustrations will be taken, to be precise, from the “Preface by Eliza-beth Gaskell”, a prototypical paratextual framing introducing the first edition of Gaskell’s industrial novel Mary Barton (1848).

1. Familiar framings are reliable. This is a consequence of the basic, orientating function of framings as codings of cognitive frames. Gaskell’s “Preface” starts with the sentence: “THREE years ago I became anxious [...] to employ myself in writing a work of fiction.” (1848/1987: xxxv) We consider the generic indi-cation “fiction”, which occurs here (and which repeats other fram-ings of the same volume pointing in the same direction), to be as trustworthy in announcing a special type of text as, for example, the title Owner’s Manual of a booklet which accompanies a cam-corder and announces a particular kind of non-fictional text, for such ‘paratexts’ are usually read as reliable communications by the author or the publisher and therefore are taken at their face value6. This also means, in the prototypical case of a preface (although in literature there are many deviations), that such framings are read, at least as a default option, as non-fictional. In a similar way we expect a picture frame (as the one represented in Illustration 1) to be solid and substantial and not a ‘fictional’, painted frame.

6 This coincides with Grice’s linguistic maxim of quality, which governs the as-sumption that statements in a conversation are true (cf. Grice 1975: 46).

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2. Familiar framings are functionally subservient to the framed. This text-centred function (in terms of the catalogue of framing functions discussed in the “Introduction”) is also a consequence of the principal function of framings as codings of cognitive frames that are relevant for the reception of the framed material7. The gen-eral subserviency of framings is particularly clear in the explanato-ry function of many framings, a function which clearly applies to Gaskell’s “Preface”: for this paratext serves to explain Gaskell’s motivation for writing the novel, namely her “deep sympathy with the care-worn men” of industrialized regions and her uneasiness that the “injustice” felt by them may “turn[...] [into] revenge” (1848/1987: xxxv), and thus codes the frame ‘moral and social relevance’ with reference to the ensuing text. In this functional subserviency to the main text Gaskell’s “Preface” illustrates a general feature of similar framings, which also informs everyday framings such as, for instance, conference openings: welcoming addresses at the beginnings of such events are expected not to be spoken for their own sake but, apart from welcoming the audience, to give information on the idea of the conference, on the following papers etc. Moreover, the audience, as in a theatrical prologue, would only accept such opening speeches if they showed their functional subserviency by not exceeding a certain – moderate – length, which ought to be considerably shorter than the framed conference parts. In an analogous way we accept that a picture frame may echo or announce forms and colours of the framed pic-ture (as the wavy ornaments in Illustration 1 do, which mirror the girl’s hair8), yet we would consider it to be a remarkable deviation

7 This is a special case of Grice’s maxim, “Be relevant” (1975: 46). It is also rele-vant to typical frame story framings (at least of the type of frame story in which the embedded story is the dominant part of the text).

8 The illustration is taken from a volume aptly entitled In Perfect Harmony(Mendgen, ed. 1995). This ‘harmony’ between frame and framed includes what else-where and with reference to literature I termed ‘mise en cadre’ (Wolf 1999: 104, and 2001, in particular 61-65): the usually anticipating ‘mirroring’ of elements of the


from our expectations if a picture frame appeared to be more im-

portant than the framed painting and instead of merely announcingelements of the framed picture would carry out a considerable part of the pictorial representation itself.

3. Familiar framings have conventional forms and conventional positions, which, in temporal media, favour framings that pre-cede the framed. The conventional quality of the form (e.g., the usual intracompositional opening formula of a fairy tale, ‘Once upon a time’), is a natural consequence of the fact that familiar framings refer to pre-existing frames (rather than produce new ones, which would be by definition an unfamiliar framing possibil-ity). Gaskell’s “Preface” in its first-person personal tone and its content (the narrative of the novel’s gestation) is a perfect example of such conventionality right from the first sentence on. The seem-ingly trivial feature of typical framings in fiction as tending to an initial position, which Gaskell’s “Preface” also fulfils, is not so banal after all. For it also derives from the basic informative and orientating function of framings, which is most important at the beginning of reception. This is why the announcement of a confe-rence programme two days after the beginning of the conference would seem as odd as a table of contents in the middle of a novel. By analogy we expect picture frames to surround paintings and not to occur in the middle of them.

4. Familiar framings can consist of several parallel sections, but

they regularly form discrete units that are only at one remove from the main framed part by being located on an (onto-)logi-cally different, usually higher, level9. The different and ‘higher’ position mentioned here again derives from the fact that framings

framed material in the framing (which is the counterpart to mise en abyme as a ‘mirroring’ of elements of a higher level in an embedded representation, text etc.).

9 Again a parallel may be seen to exist to Grice’s “supermaxim – ‘Be perspicuous’” (1975: 46).

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are markers of meta-concepts10. This position, the postulated dis-creteness and the fact that framings are only at one remove from the framed text (for otherwise the reference could get lost) are all fulfilled by Gaskell’s “Preface”. As a paratext, it is not only set off typographically from the main text but is also located on the supe-rior level of the author who speaks of herself in the first person (as opposed to the following third-person narrative). Additionally, as there are no intervening further framing instances, the “Preface” is only one level ‘above’ the following novel. In all of these related features Gaskell’s framing is similar both to painterly frames and to everyday framings. The frames around paintings, as a rule, differ visibly from the picture, physically as well as in their usual non-participation in the (fictional) representation of the framed picture11, and their distinctness is also underlined by the fact that they are normally not doubled by a further frame as a part of the painting itself. As for everyday framings, one may once again take the example of an academic conference: such an event usually starts with discrete and ritualized opening speeches. These are set off from the scholarly papers, for instance, by the fact that they are not accompanied by handouts or powerpoint presentations; in addi-tion, although more than one opening speech is not unusual, all of them, in their essential parts, directly refer to the framed con-ference and do not unexpectedly turn out to be mainly recursive introductions to secondary speakers who would present embedded welcomes and opening addresses.

10 There are, however, exceptions, as is shown in the contribution to this volume by Haiko Wandhoff, who convincingly argues that in some cases an initial ekphrasis can serve as a framing for the entire text. Although, narratologically speaking, such an ekphrasis is located on a hypodiegetic and hence lower level than the framed text, it arguably is logically superior if conceived of (as may also be said of certain narrative mises en abyme) as a signal inserted by the implied author for framing purposes.

11 This typical non-participation in the representation of the picture must be distin-guished from the frequent ornamental representations of leaves, fruit etc. on picture frames, which, however, usually have nothing to do with the picture itself.


Together, these four traits form the background from which defamiliarized framings in fiction deviate for various purposes. It should be noted, though, that deviation is not a binary opposition of conformity vs. departure but a matter of degree. I will therefore, in the following, start with a relatively mild deviation and end with a highly salient one. My focus will be on verbal framings, including, however, both paratextual and intratextual variants. As already announced, I would also like to continue my analogies to paintings by referring to defamiliarized framings taken from the field of the visual arts.

2. Defamiliarized Framings (I): Unreliable Framings

A simple and frequent way of deviating from the standard of familiar framings is the non-fulfilment of the expectation of reliability. This departure is relatively unspectacular because it meets a certain expec-tation of literature as a ‘deviant discourse’. Yet, it is nevertheless re-markable as it seemingly provides the recipient with ‘irrelevant’ infor-mation and misleading codings of cognitive frames. Unreliable fram-ings can occur both in paratexts and in intratextual framings.

An instance of the former case is Christopher Hope’s recent novel Darkest England (1996/1997). Recalling Swift’s advertisement “The Publisher to the Reader” in Gulliver’s Travels, Hope prefaces his text with seemingly authentic paratexts: there are an “Acknowledgement” and an apparently autobiographical “Foreword”, which both suggest that the following text is really the transcript of two autographical notebooks by a certain David Mungo Booi, allegedly a member of the native South African Khoisan people. As we learn later in the novel, David sets out to England to ask Queen Elizabeth to protect his peo-ple, but comes into surprising and painful contact with a contempo-rary, post-colonial England which does not correspond at all to his idealized notions of Britain. While Booi still conceives of it in terms of Victorian England, the England he is actually confronted with turns out to be beset by a general decay and numerous social problems such as juvenile violence and xenophobia. Yet, all this only becomes clear

304 Werner Wolf

after one has read the framing paratexts. How convincing, almost trompe l’œil these actually are and how remote from coding ‘unreli-ability’ can be seen in the following quotation from the “Acknowl-edgements” by the so-called ‘editor’:

Acknowledgements

In seeking to understand better the traditions and culture of the Khoisan people, so insistently recalled in the note-books of David Mungo Booi, I learnt a great deal from Alan Barnard’s elegant study: Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa, Cambridge 1992. I am grateful to Cambridge University Press for permission to reproduce Alan Barnard’s explanation for the five basic click sounds found in the Khoisan lan-guages (see page 282). An account of my discovery of the English notebooks of David Mungo Booi first appeared in the Daily Telegraph in October 1994. The fragment of verse on page 166, translated from the original /Xam by Stephen Watson, is reproduced with the permission of the author. (Hope 1996/ 1997: vii)

The suggestion of authenticity in this passage goes even so far as to contain genuine bibliographical references12.

In stark contrast to this, the whole story is an unmistakably fic-tional satire both on today’s England and on past British imperialism. The author’s alleged aim, namely to “seek[...] to understand better the traditions and culture” of the English, is a parody of the humanitarian and scientific interest in the African ‘savages’ professed by 19th-cen-tury British explorers and travelogue writers. Hope’s most important satirical device, however, is the inversion of the colonial, eurocentric gaze in David Booi’s afro-centric perspective. Similar to the Persian traveller who writes about France in Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes, Hope’s satire is based on David’s biassed view of England. Ironically, one of the aims of David’s enterprise is to explore the country in view of a possible colonization in reverse: a colonization of England by the Khoisan people. The absurdity of this enterprise openly belies the seeming authenticity and factuality of the framing, which announces the opposite of the actually applicable cognitive frame, namely ‘fic-tionality’. The defamiliarized framing thus combines a context-centred 12 Alan Barnard’s book really exists.


function (the rejection of imperialism) with a recipient-centred as well as a self-centred and meta-aesthetic function (the activation of the readers so that they feel compelled to reflect on the location of the text within the opposition ‘reality vs. fiction’). The trompe-l’œil-quality of Hope’s framing has a surprising counterpart in the trompe-

l’œil painting by DeScott Evans reproduced in Illustration 2: here the

Illustration 2: DeScott Evans. “A New Variety, Try One” (ca. 1890)

wooden frame turns out to be as fictional as its content so that the notice, “try one”, misleads the viewer in a way reminiscent of the

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birds that are said to have been deceived by grapes which the Greek painter Zeuxis had imitated so well13.

The unreliability which appears in Hope’s misleading paratexts as well as elsewhere in the novel (see Sommer 1998) can also be achieved by intratextual framings. A good illustration of such a deviation from familiar framings is the classic of unreliable narration, E. A. Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843): in the brief extradiegetic framing of this tale a first-person narrator addresses an anonymous interlocutor with the well-known words, “Why will you say that I am mad” (Poe 1843/ 1908: 289). He emphatically claims to be perfectly sane, while the framed text, the narrator’s account of how he killed an old man with an alleged Evil Eye, blatantly points to the contrary.

On the surface, in both Hope’s and Poe’s cases, the framings are defamiliarized in that they do not fulfil the usual function of providing the reader with appropriate frames for understanding the following text: in Poe’s story, the framing misleads the reader with reference to the narrator’s sanity, and in Hope’s case the framing, which itself purports to be factual, announces a similar factuality of the framed, while both texts turn out to be fictional. On taking a closer look, we will see that the matter is more complicated, though. In Poe’s story, the narrator’s claim to be sane is already contradicted by his odd con-tention that he is able to “hear[...] all things in the heaven and in the earth” (289), and in Hope’s novel the “Acknowledgements” are in turn framed by the cover on which, at least in the 1997 paperback edi-tion, the promise of a “[h]ilarious ... Gulliver’s Travels for the nine-

13 Another example of an unreliable painterly framing is Cornelis Norbertus Gijs-brechts’ Reverse Side of a Painting (c. 1670-1675), which is reproduced on the cover of this volume (turned 90 degrees). For what here appears to be the back of a real framing turns out to be a trompe-l’œil fiction, the mere representation of a picture frame (and canvas complete with price tag). In addition, the promise made by this trompe-l’œil painting, namely that the ‘real thing’ will be found on the reverse, turns out to be equally fallacious, for the seeming reverse is actually the true back of the painting. As already mentioned in the “Introduction” to this volume, this is a brilliant illustration of the possibility of framings to fulfill a self-centred function through meta-referentiality.


ties” announces a fictitious satire. The result of these tensions within the framings themselves is a relatively conventional one: namely to alert the reader to what are indeed also really important frames of the respective texts: in Hope’s case the generic frame ‘satire’, in Poe’s case the thematic frame of an exploration of madness14. Even defamiliarized framings can thus be seen to fulfill a traditional text-centred function.

3. Defamiliarized Framings (II): Unrelated and

Parasitic Framings

A second means of defamiliarizing framings consists in inflating them to unusual proportions and to give them a weight and relative inde-pendence which contradicts the expectation that framings are subser-vient to the framed. As a consequence of this realization of the self-centred function of framings, the cognitive frames and notions sig-nalled by such strange framings seem to be in an unfamiliarly loose or even non-existent relationship to the framed main text.

An amusing example of a framing that seems to a considerable ex-tent to exist for its own sake and thus appears to thrive parasitically on the framed text is Jonathan Swift’s satire A Tale of a Tub (1704). The unusualness of the framings can be seen here in their proportion compared to the framed text as well as in their inflated number and variety: After the title page, which sports no less than three Latin epigraphs (see Swift 1704/1986: 1), there follows a survey of “Trea-tises written by the same Author” (1), moreover “An Apology” (1-10)15 with a “Postscript” (10), then a dedication “To the right honour-able John Lord Somers” (10-13), a section “The Bookseller to the Reader” (13), as well as an “Epistle Dedicatory to this Royal Highness Prince Posterity” (14-18), and it is only then that we reach “The

14 For further examples of unreliable framings see Stang 1992, and MacLachlan/ Reid 1994: 94-96.

15 It should be noted that the “Apology” appeared only in the fifth edition (see Ross/ Wooley 1985: xi).

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Preface” (18-25). After this series of no less than eleven paratexts (including title and epigraphs) the reader trusts that he has finally arrived at the text proper, which in fact is announced by a repeated title “A Tale of a Tub, &c.” and the chapter title “Sect. I” (25). Yet, the reader’s patience is again tried when he notices that this first sec-tion is again an “Introduction” (25). In fact, the actual text does not begin until “Sect. II”, where, finally, an intratextual framing, “Once upon a time” (34), announces the beginning of the fictitious story proper. This story is reminiscent of an episode in Boccaccio’s Il De-

camerone and was later on reused in a slightly altered form by Lessing in Nathan der Weise: it is the well-known parable of the father who bequeathed different coats, symbols of religions, to his three sons. When this story commences, more than 34 out of a total of 103 pages have already been consumed by framings, a most unfamiliar propor-tion indeed.

This quantitative oddity has its counterpart in the unusual quality of most of Swift’s paratexts. Parts of them admittedly fulfil traditional framing expectations. This is notably the case in the “Apology”16, in which (among other things) the generic frame “satire” (2) is an-nounced as well as the discursive practices employed for its transmis-sion: “Allegory” (2), “digressions” (ibid.), “parodies” (3), and “irony” (4). We also learn about the textual history; we moreover read a de-fence against the reproach of ridiculing religion, and we are informed about the main thrust of the satire, which is directed against “The

abuses in Religion” and “Learning” (2). Yet, in the paratexts of A Tale

of a Tub such traditional framings, which have an obvious relevance to the main text and are in fact subservient to it, are oddly combined with elements that are not related to the main text, at least not to the religious (predominantly anti-Catholic) satire. This lack of relation-

16 There is also an obvious framing relationship between paratext and main text in parts of “The Bookseller to the Reader” (e.g., in alerting the reader to the “difficult parts” of the main text, which may require a “key” [13]) and in the “Preface” (notably in the ironic explanation of the title ‘A Tale of a Tub’).


ship appears in self-referential passages of the type “This Apology

being chiefly intended for the satisfaction of future readers [...]” (4). The disconnectedness of paratext and main text is clearest in the self-reflexive discussions of the conventions and abuses of dedication and preface writing. An example of such metatextuality occurs when the author claims that he is “sufficiently instructed in the principal duty of a preface”, which, according to him, consists of devising “some nota-ble distinguishing stroke to surprise the reader at the entry” (19)17. Swift, again ironically, explains his non-conformist use of framings belatedly in the main text in a metatextual digression, which is said to be “more proper in a preface” (62):

[...] I do utterly disapprove and declare against that pernicious custom of making the preface a bill of fare to the book. For I have always looked upon it as a high point of indiscretion in monster-mongers and other retailers of strange sights, to hang out a fair large picture over the door, drawn after the life with a most elo-quent description underneath. This hath saved me many a threepence, for my cu-riosity was fully satisfied and I never offered to go in, though often invited by the urging and attending orator with his last moving and standing piece of rhetoric, ‘Sir, upon my word, we are just going to begin.’ (Swift 1704/1986: 63)

What is mentioned here, namely paratextual “picture[s]” and “de-

scription[s]” as not merely announcing a “strange sight” but already

displaying it, leads on to a second device by which Swift also departs from the customary subservience of framings to the framed: instead of pointing to a following satire against the “abuses [...] in Learning” (2) he makes some of his framings parasitically take over part of this satire on their own. Functionally, these framings thus become part of the main text. Instead of merely coding relevant information and cog-nitive frames for the understanding of an embedded text they turn out to be part of ‘the real thing’ and participate in the main text’s meta-literary attack of Grub street hacks. Swift criticizes them because in the struggle between the ‘Ancients’ and the ‘Moderns’ they seem to support the latter faction while their real aim is simply self-advertise-

17 Cf. also p. 11, where a similar kind of metatextuality refers to dedication writing (“I should now, in right of a dedicator, give your Lordship a list of your own virtues [...]”).

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ment and the production of sellable texts regardless of their aesthetic quality. In this context, Swift’s inflated self-centred, meta-referential framings serve the purpose of exposing the practice of self-advertis-ing, page-consuming digressions and the production of texts beside the point.

Swift’s defamiliarizing inflation of framings is not unique. One could, for instance, mention Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire (1962), where the disproportion between the pseudo-philological introduction and framed eponymous poem is even more outspoken, so that the framing appears to be more important than the framed text. An ana-logous, equally extreme case of this in the field of the visual artworks can be seen in ‘experimental’ pictures as in Illustration 318.

Illustration 3: Pablo Picasso. “Pipe and Partition” (1914)

18 Again, one may in addition refer to the cover illustration of this volume (Gijs-brechts’ Reverse Side of a Painting), for this metapainting is not much more than (the representation of) a picture frame.


4. Defamiliarized Framings (III): ‘Deformed’ and

Displaced Framings

As mentioned above, familiar framings have conventional forms. This not only applies to the internal form of, e.g., a preface but also to the expectable nature and sequence of framings. In the publications of contemporary late-twentieth-century and early-twenty-first-century paperback fiction this is usually a cover with illustration, title, au-thor’s name and, on the back cover, advertising excerpts from reviews. On the first page there is often a short bio-bibliographical note on the author, followed on the next page by a survey of titles by the same author, then by the title page and on its reverse the publishing details as well as, optionally, on the fifth page a section ‘Acknowledgements’ and/or a short dedication and one or more epigraphs, before the main text (preceded optionally by the number and/or title of the first chapter) starts. A table of contents, which was regularly included in novels up to the nineteenth century, no longer forms part of today’s publication conventions.

John Barth’s novel The Sot-Weed Factor (1960/1967) differs nota-bly from this pattern because of the fact that it does in fact contain a table of “Contents”. Furthermore, it not only ‘deforms’ the expected arrangement of twentieth-century paratexts by the unusual insertion of such a table of contents before the first chapter, it also foregrounds this deviation by giving all the chapters titles which contain up to eight lines so that the entire table of contents occupies no less than seven pages. Clearly, this deviation from the familiar form of today’s paratexts codes the historical frame ‘eighteenth-century novel’; more-over, it signals – and to a certain extent also contributes to – the parodic metafictional function of this postmodernist novel as a whole, which is a playful, self-reflexive recycling of a Henry-Fielding-cum-Daniel-Defoe-style novel.

An even more radical ‘deformation’ of initial paratexts can be ob-served in Alasdair Gray’s equally postmodernist metafiction Lanark

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(1982): this novel sports a “Table of contents” that starts with “Book three” and its eleven chapters before announcing a “PROLOGUE telling how a nonentity was made and made oracular”. As in the case of Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor, this defamiliarization dovetails with a highly defamiliarized, experimental and metafictional main text and shows the extent to which both storytelling and its framings have become ‘deformed’ in postmodernism.

Gray’s novel also epitomizes another, related variant of the de-familiarization of framings: the displacement of a framing section from its expected position. Lanark (like The Sot-Weed Factor) not only contains a historical, diachronical displacement of paratexts by re-introducing the outmoded convention of a table of contents into a twentieth-century text, the novel also synchronically displaces its “Prologue” by relegating it to page 107. In doing so Gray deviates from the most familiar location of framings in fiction, which is the be-ginning of a book or framed text. However, by thus playing with con-ventions Gray still uses a framing device for the purpose of coding, as this procedure signals the self-reflexive playfulness of the entire text.

An earlier example of the same device of displacement can be ob-served in a novel by an eighteenth-century author whose metatextual playfulness has often been compared to Swift’s and whose metatextu-ality has often been considered to heavily influence postmodernists like Gray and Barth, namely in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. Here, a mock “Dedication”, which does not refer to any existing “Prince, Prelate, Pope, or Potentate” (Sterne 1759-1767/1967: 45), is displaced to chapter 8 of the first book, and “The Author’s Preface” appears as late as chapter 20 of book three19. In both cases these mis-

19 A Tale of a Tub could in fact also be used as an illustration of early displacements of framing in fiction in English. Here the playful and satirical use of framings is not only shown in the fact that a second dedication (the dedication to “Prince Posterity”) appears after a first dedication (the dedication to “The Right Honourable John Lord Sumers”) but also in the circumstance that a section entitled “The Bookseller to the Reader” incongruously occurs in between these two dedications: according to the hierarchy of paratexts (and since the bookseller comments on all the papers by “the


placed paratexts also contain pertinent framings: the “Dedication”, which addresses a basically “generous and noble [...] Lord” (44), who has ridden his hobby-horse where moral action would have been re-quired, emphasizes the novel’s moral concern and its tension with the celebration of ‘hobby-horses’, and the “Preface” deals with the syn-thesis of ‘wit’ and ‘judgement’ which informs part of the novel’s im-plied norms. Yet, as with the afore-mentioned parasitic framings, these paratexts also and predominantly depart from traditional fram-ings by gaining a most unusual importance of their own: the “Pre-

face”, for instance, not only announces but also illustrates the union of wit and judgement, a major concern of the novel. Sterne’s fictitious author does so by employing – and self-critically exposing (see p. 203) – a witty illustration of both faculties (the two knobs on the back of a chair). In addition, and most importantly in our context, both the “Preface” and the “Dedication” metatextually lay bare paratextual conventions. They thus reinforce the metafictional bias of the entire novel (a rough painterly analogy to this employing of displaced fram-ings for meta-‘textual’ purposes would be the ‘misplaced’ frame in Magritte’s “Les Charmes du Paysage”, which obviously triggers re-flections on the relationship between frames and framed [see Illustra-

tion 4]). Last but not least, the odd displacement of paratexts in Tristram Shandy also illustrates the narrator’s own ‘oddity’ of “con-fin[ing] [him]self [...] to [no] man’s rules that ever lived” (1759-67/ 1967: 38)20.

author”), such an advertisement should appear before the other paratexts, except for the epigraphs.

20 For a similar function of a misplaced paratext, namely the illustration of the in this case sentimental excentricity of a narrator cf. the “Preface in the Desobligeant” in Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, where a ‘preface’ appears as late as in the seventh section of the first book (1768/1967: 33).

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Illustration 4: René Magritte. “Les Charmes du Paysage” [‘The Charms of Landscape’] (1929)

Sterne’s inclusion of framings into the general departure from all conventions of novel-writing is well-known and need not be discussed here in more detail21. What is less well known, however, is a second device of displacing framings which is even more startling since it does not refer to optional framings such as prefaces but implicates what readers would consider indispensable, namely framings that under normal conditions (notably the expected reliability of framings) are compulsory. This second device has its best approximate analogy in the practice of some late-twentieth-century and contemporary painters who exhibited their canvasses without frames. However, this is not a real correlative since the device under discussion can only be carried out in a temporal medium. This can be seen in a text by Ronald Sukenick, “The Death of the Novel” (1969), which begins as follows:

Fiction constitutes a way of looking at the world. Therefore I will begin by con-sidering how the world looks in what I think we may now begin to call the con-

21 For a full discussion of the paratexts in Tristram Shandy, which are indeed much more than mere ‘thresholds’ to the main text, see Zander 1996.


temporary post-realistic novel. Realistic fiction presupposed chronological time as the medium of a plotted narrative, an irreducible individual psyche as the subject of its characterization, and above all, the ultimate, concrete reality of things as the object and rationale of this description. In the world of post-realism, however, all of these absolutes have become absolutely problematic.

The contemporary writer [...] is forced to start from scratch: [...] (Sukenick 1969: 41)

This apparent literary essay goes on for quite a few lines more before the argumentative tone suddenly and surprisingly changes into a nar-rative one with: “I walked into the cafeteria. I had been hired to teach an advanced honours seminar on the Death of the Novel” (41-42). It is at this point that it becomes clear that the preceding text is not the beginning of a literary essay on the “post-realistic novel” but part of the teaching of a fictitious professor of literature named Ronald Suke-nick (!). The quoted opening is hence not only what has been termed a

‘critifictional text’22 but also a hypodiegetic passage within a short

story. The surprising effect of the transition from seeming essay to

narrative23 derives from the fact that Sukenick has omitted what in

traditional storytelling would inevitably have been signalled, namely the framed, embedded status of the ‘critifictional text’: Sukenick has simply suppressed an initial framing. Elsewhere, I have called this the

device of the ‘missing opening frame’24. It can repeatedly be observed

in postmodernist experimental fiction (e.g., in David Lodge’s short story “Hotel des Boobs” [1986/1987] and, on a much larger scale, in Thomas Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow [1973], in which the very last page reveals the fact that the preceding text was the transcript

22 According to Truchlar 1983: 331, the term was coined by Raymond Federman in his unpaginated novel Take It or Leave It (1976).

23 On the basis of a rather fuzzy notion of metalepsis, Genette, referring to an epi-sode in the TV series Dallas in which a past episode was belatedly made to appear as a mere dream, has even called this disconcerting effect ‘metaleptic’ (see Genette 2004: 118-119). One must, however, emphasize that in such cases the (onto-)logical paradox which is typical of metalepsis (see below, chapter 6) is not involved.

24 Cf. Wolf 1992: 30. I coined this term as a complement to a more common and less surprising device which Brian McHale called “missing end-frame” (1987: 117).

316 Werner Wolf

of a movie)25. Yet it can also be traced to older narratives, such as

Ambrose Bierce’s short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1891). Here the reader learns in a similarly belated and startling way that most of the text has merely rendered the stream of consciousness of the to-be-executed focalizer seconds before his death.

The basic function of the missing opening frame can be described as a counterpart to the unreliable frame mentioned earlier: it also mis-

leads the reader, only in this case this is not done by the presence of a

framing text but rather by its absence. As the examples show, the missing opening frame usually has a startling, recipient-centred effect that in turn can be exploited for various purposes: for metafictional and anti-illusionist reflections on the opposition ‘reality vs. fiction’26, but also for a shocking intensification of illusionist empathy with ref-erence to a fictional character, as in Bierce’s story. In either case, even the displaced framings can still signal frames that are essential for the understanding of the text and thus serve a text-centred function, albeit retrospectively: in Sukenick’s text the teaching situation self-ironically reveals that tenets of an originally revolutionary anti-realistic aesthetic (which inform his own story) are nowadays so com-mon that they have become course material at the level of college in-struction. In Bierce’s story the framing dramatically sets the narrated story of a flight in perspective, as it turns out to have been a mere fantasy at the moment of death by execution. The postponed framing thus reframes in a highly significant way: as becomes clear at the end, it is not the frame ‘authorial third-person narrative situation’ that is applicable to the relevant part of the text but ‘stream of conscious-ness’, which actually veils a covert first-person narrative situation (and hence an interior monologue). 25 Further postmodernist examples include Gabriel Josipovici’s short story “He” from In the Fertile Land (1987) and David Mitchell’s recent novel Cloud Atlas (2004), in which the device of a ‘missing opening framing’ is repeatedly employed.

26 For aesthetic illusion and various anti-illusionist devices see Wolf 1993a (where I also discussed Sukenick’s “The Death of the Novel” as an example of extended ex-plicit metafiction [243-244]).


5. Defamiliarized Framings (IV): Recursive Framings

Yet a further means of defamiliarizing framings is to multiply them so that the clear binary structure of framing vs. framed gets blurred through recursive embeddings. This formal mise en abyme of a frame structure is most frequent in complicated frame stories27 and basically occurs in two variants: as a finite or an infinite recursivity.

The first variant seems to be the ‘tamer’ one. In the visual arts, it can have a startling effect, as exemplified by Magritte’s “Les Charmes du Paysage” (Illustration 4), which is not only an illustration of a deplaced but also of a recursive framing with a self-reflexive function. Finite, and in particular a single recursive framing can, however, be much less extreme and less overtly self-reflexive, even though it may be debatable whether the effect of foregrounding framing as such is altogether lost, as is the case in the mainly illusionist painting by Fer-dinand Waldmüller, “Junge Bäuerin mit drei Kindern im Fenster” (Illustration 5)28.

27 Williams contends that “in literary texts frames [i.e., the framings of frame sto-ries] often multiply” (1998: 106) and even attributes the “recurring frame” a slot in a ternary typology of frame story framings (alongside with the “prologue frame” [120] and the “bracketing [...] frame” [122]). However, even in the restricted field of frame stories simple embedding is certainly more frequent than recursive framing, and thus such recursivity may be seen as a relatively unfamiliar way of dealing with framings. Williams, in addition, claims that “multiple frames stress the projection of a source” of the narrative (107); this attempt at attributing a familiar function of single frame story framings (see my contribution to this volume on “Framing Borders in Frame Stories”) to multiple ones is highly problematic, not least because Williams himself, later on, contradicts himself by remarking, with reference to Emily Brontë’s Wuther-ing Heights, that a “multiplicity of frames causes a confusion of the layers of focalization” (124).

28 The slightly disturbing effect in relation to the otherwise strong illusionistic im-pact of the picture is the foregrounding of the act of framing, which is enhanced by the fact that the window-frame is, rather unusually, cut like a picture frame.

318 Werner Wolf

Illustration 5: Ferdinand Waldmüller. “Junge Bäuerin mit drei Kin-dern im Fenster” [‘Young Peasant Woman with Three Children in a Window’] (1840)

In similar, relatively ‘harmless cases’ in fiction, finite recursive framings can even overrule any metafictional function in the service of an enhancement of narrative suspense and hence of aesthetic im-mersion and illusion. This recipient-centred function can be seen at work in the typical use of the device in Gothic fiction, where the narrative structure repeatedly delays the disclosure of a horrible secret buried in hypo-diegetic depths. A good example of this ‘Chinese-boxes-structure’ is Charles Maturin’s classic, Melmoth the Wanderer

(1820). This novel contains an ‘abyss’ of four levels below the diegetic level, and it is characteristically on the lowest level that the secret of the eponymous villain and his Faustus-like “boundless aspiration after forbidden knowledge” (Maturin 1820/1977: 647) is finally disclosed (in chapter 32). It seems as if the recursive framing structure not only provides multiple mirrorings of the intended reader


reaction to the recounted horrors and thus repeatedly codes the genre ‘Gothic fiction’ (as in each framing reactions of fear and terror felt by fictional ‘reception figures’ can be represented); the recursive struc-ture moreover appears to erect narrative boundaries to this “boundless aspiration” and seeks to contain the transgressive urge which is the basis of the story as well as of the typical Gothic discourse with its characteristic emphasis on the counter-norm and the horrible29.

The second variant of recursive framing, namely endless recursiv-ity, is much more unsettling and defamiliarizing, even though such mise en abyme à l’infini, for obvious reasons, can only be suggested, as Dorrit Cohn has pertinently remarked in a recent essay (see 2005: 127), whether in entire texts or in little textual pockets. A brief and yet classic example taken from drama instead of fiction may illustrate the variant of a suggestion of infinite recursivity of framings in an isolated textual pocket: it is the, in principle, endless rhyme “A dog came in the kitchen” (Beckett 1956/1981: I, 412) with which Beckett aptly opens the second act of Waiting for Godot (1956), thus illustrating, by means of a mise en abyme, the endless and monotonous sameness and negativity of existence, in which the epiphany of a saving God[ot] is as endlessly deferred as the ending of the children’s rhyme:

A dog came in the kitchen And stole a crust of bread. The cook up with a ladle And beat him till he was dead.

Then all the dogs came running And dug the dog a tomb [...] And wrote upon the tombstone For the eyes of dogs to come:

A dog came in the kitchen [...]

29 Examples of recursive framing can also be found among the paratexts of Swift’s A Tale of a Tub, e.g., where a “Postscript” does not appear at the end of the main text but between “The Apology” and a dedication and by its reference to the “Apology” becomes the paratext of a paratext.

320 Werner Wolf

The suggestion of infinite framings in entire texts is very rare. An example that comes to mind here is a highly experimental case in which repeated framing extends to seven embedded levels, namely John Barth’s postmodernist and extremely disconcerting story “Mene-laiad” from Lost in the Funhouse (1968). This short story can be viewed as an experiment with the very act of embedding in order to subvert the notion of textual origin as such and to destroy aesthetic illusion, as has become de rigueur in the radical variant of postmod-ernism. In such multiplications of framings the orientating and infor-mative function of the framing with respect to the framed gets utterly lost and is replaced by the calculated confusion of the reader. The cod-ing implied in this defamiliarized framing thus turns into an es-sentially self-reflexive one as it metatextually foregrounds the very act of framing together with its ‘familiar’ functions.

6. Defamiliarized Framings (V): Metaleptic Framings

The disconcerting effect of endless or near endless framing is similar to the effect which the perhaps most radical defamiliarization of ordi-nary framing can have: this is the subversion of the clear, logical and representational distinction between framing and framed in ‘metalep-sis’. This phenomenon, which, in its narrative variant, was first termed as such by Gérard Genette (see 1972: 243-251), can be defined as follows: metalepsis is usually an intentional paradoxical transgression of, or confusion between (onto-)logically distinct (sub)worlds and lev-els that exist or are referred to within representations of possible worlds (cf. Wolf 2005: 91). Metalepsis has recently found much at-tention both in narratology and beyond (see Ryan 2004, Genette 2004, Pier/Schaeffer, eds. 2005, Wolf 2005) and therefore here only requires a cursory illustration.

The locus classicus of metalepsis, already mentioned by Genette, is, of course, Julio Cortázar’s one-and-a-half-page short story “Conti-nuidad de los parques” (1956; Engl. “Continuity of Parks”), which Maria Stefanescu discusses in more detail in her contribution to this


volume (see “The (Dis)Continuity of Frames”). In this story, the read-er of a novel, which he peruses in an intense state of aesthetic illusion, appears to become the victim of a fictitious character of the very text he is reading. One of the principal functions of all framing sections of frame stories, namely the signalling of the ontological status of the embedded text, gets thereby confused, since the embedded novel, which is overtly classified as fiction in the framing, ‘impossibly’ seems to spill over onto the story’s framing ‘reality’30. Inner-fictional reality and fiction thus become blurred and may startle the reader. Yet this is not the only nor, perhaps, the most important effect. The factual (or experiential) ‘impossibility’ of what is suggested here (being killed by a fiction) ultimately foregrounds the cognitive frame applicable to the entire text, namely fictionality (in addition, the ending of the story probably also implies a warning to the reader not to yield too readily to the dangerous lure of aesthetic illusion).

Yet, Cortázar’s story is only a miniature of more extended experi-ments with metalepsis or, as Brian McHale has called them, “strange loops” or “short circuits” (1987: 119, 213). Again, it is no coincidence that such radical defamiliarization of framings can mostly be observed in postmodernist fiction as written by John Barth, John Fowles, Gabriel Josipovici and others31.

In the pictorial medium there are numerous correlatives of such disregarding of the categorical difference between frame and framed with varying degrees of metaleptic ‘impossibility’. They include, as a relatively unspectacular variant still on this side of metalepsis, trompe-

30 In her paper, Maria Stefanescu, however, rightly points out that in Cortázar’s story the metaleptic confusion of framing and framed takes place almost entirely in our imagination, which is guided, or – once again – misguided by the text.

31 Cf. John Barth, “Frame Tale” in Lost in the Funhouse (1968); John Fowles, Man-tissa (1982, the first chapter of this metafictional allegory contains a combination of missing opening frame and metalepsis, since at the end of the chapter it turns out that the text we have been reading is a manuscript allegedly produced by a diegetic char-acter, a nurse, who transcribes the thoughts of her patient, an amnesiac writer); for Josipovici see below, the “Conclusion”, and for more details Wolf 1993b: 139-145, and Fludernik 2000: 31-33.

322 Werner Wolf

l’œil suggestions of a continuity between framing and framed as in the well-known device of a symbiosis between an architectural framing and an illusionist picture in which architectural elements seem to continue the wooden or marble framing on the canvas32. A more unusual, non-representational variant of this crossover between framed and framing can be seen in Illustration 6, while Illustration 7 constitutes, on the level of the representation alone, a particularly paradoxical metalepsis involv-ing (represented) framings and framed pictures.

Illustration 6: Giacomo Balla. “Velocità astratta + rumore” [‘Ab-stract Speed and Noise’] (1913)

32 This procedure can be exemplified by an altar piece by Giovanni Bellini, “Madonna with Child and Saints”, in the Chiesa dei Frari in Venice. However, such cases of suggested identity of framing and framed in spite of their physical (and con-ventional) difference are only marginal cases of metalepsis, since a ‘paradoxical’ quality would only emerge here if one did not accept the illusionism of the representation, which has, after all, also been a convention in Western art for centuries.


Illustration 7: M. C. Escher. “Bildgalerie” [‘Picture Gallery’] (1956)

7. Conclusion

As has been seen both in the literary and the pictorial examples, there are numerous ways of deviating from received notions about (initial) framings. The proposed typology of departures from the familiar was intended to serve as a mere orientation and does not purport to be ex-haustive (it could, for example, be complemented by various forms of terminal framings). Moreover, it does not exclude borderline cases and multiple classifications. A case in point is Gabriel Josipovici’s metaleptic mobius-strip-like story “Mobius the Stripper” (1972), in which two stories, narrated in the upper and lower parts of the book’s pages, simultaneously function both as framings and framed with ref-erence to each other: This story could be entered under both ‘meta-leptic framings’ and ‘missing opening frame’, for most readers, when first reading the text, will realize the framed status of either story only belatedly, namely after having finished the second story. In a similar way, the handling of framings in David Mitchell’s recent Cloud Atlas

324 Werner Wolf

(2004) can also be classified in two ways, as this novel is both an in-genious exercise in missing opening frames and in recursive framings. For the novel consists of six chronologically different story levels in which each later level turns out to be the framing of the previous story so that the topmost story in the stack, a narrative set in a distant dys-topian future after the fall of civilization, is not only the result of the earlier cultural and moral history of humankind but also comprises all the previous stories33.

As has also been seen, the manifold devices outlined above serve functions as diverse as supporting thematic concerns, preparing or even parasitically taking over from the main text a satirical or parodic gesture, misleading and hence activating the recipient, introducing a witty, playful element in the artefact or marking playfulness as an appropriate cognitive frame for the reception, and also foregrounding or subverting logical and ontological oppositions, notably the opposi-tion between reality and fiction, which as such amounts to self-reflex-ively highlighting one of the most important cognitive frames. More-over, all of the defamiliarizing devices share the fact that they are also a reaction against a habit which already the fictitious author of Swift’s Tale of a Tub criticized: namely that “many of the yawning readers in our age do nowadays twirl over [the] pages [...] of preface and dedi-

cation [...] as if it were so much Latin” (63). By defamiliarized fram-ings Swift and other authors are ideal allies for a volume which is dedicated to exactly what they all seem to have in mind, namely that framings are not just minor additions to a main text or artefact but are an important contribution to processes of reception. According to Derrida, framings as ‘parerga’ tend to ‘efface themselves’ (1978/87: 61). Yet, this is a problematic claim, as such effacement applies only

33 A particularly intriguing example of a playful, satiric use of several unfamiliar framing devices (including a plurimedial combination of words and images) is Mal-colm Bradbury’s satire on (post-)structuralism, My Strange Quest for Mensonge, Structuralism’s Hidden Hero (1987), which I have used elsewhere as an example of framing in fiction (see Wolf 1999: 113-121).


to the reception process when it is already focussed on the framed; one wonders, however, if this effacement can be postulated for fore-grounded, defamiliarized framings. At any rate, the ‘thickness’ of framings deserves more attention than most readers and recipients usually give them. This is already true of familiar framings in fiction, but even more so of defamiliarized ones, as hopefully this paper has shown.

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The (Dis)Continuity of Framings

Maria Stefanescu

As traditionally defined, a ‘frame story’ consists of a framing narrative and one or more framed stories. In the most salient representatives of the genre, the framing discourse functions as an explicit metanarrative comment on the embedded sto-ries, whose fictional worlds are thus unambiguously marked as belonging to a lower ‘ontological’ level. Yet, there are experimental works – among which J. Cortázar’s “Continuity of Parks” – which (seem to) allow for impossible referen-tial transgressions and deliberately undermine the separation between text and metatext. A cognitive approach to “Continuity of Parks” indicates that, while the activation of specific sets of cognitive frames will re-contextualize the story in various ways, few physical textual ‘framings’ can be shown to correspond to the cognitive frames which they are normally believed to evoke and expected to moti-vate. It is by effacing rather than highlighting concrete framing borders – marks of separation between the embedding and the embedded narratives – that Cortázar’s story produces the surprise effect of the ending.

It appears to be an assumption implicit in the very concept of the fra-me story that one can distinguish unequivocally between the framing story and the embedded story (or stories). But, whereas canonical examples of the genre, in both oral and written tradition, preserve the neat picture of discrete referential domains segregated by specific textual and paratextual devices, experimental writing often renders elusive the borderline between the framing and the framed story, by effacing all or most conventionally encoded marks of separation. In a text like J. Cortázar’s “Continuity of Parks” (“Continuidad de los parques”, 1956), the readers identify the cognitive frames which prompt them to recognize the story as a frame story, without, how-ever, being able to locate unequivocally the concrete, physical fram-ings which (are expected to) indicate some discontinuity between the discursive levels corresponding to the distinct referential levels of the framed and the framing stories.

330 Maria Stefanescu

Founded on the implicit contention that no immediate experience of the world is possible, C. Fillmore’s frame semantics brings to the fore the rôle of frames in apprehending and organizing a reality which does not reveal itself as an unqualified Ding-an-sich, but is always presented within particular framings that make it out each time as a ‘different’ reality (see Fillmore 1982). It is recognition of the fact that every situation can be schematized in multiple ways that recommends Fillmore’s semantics as a singularly appropriate cognitive approach to literature. Viewing the process of understanding a text as “that of giving it a maximally rich interpretation” (Fillmore 1985: 234), Fill-more also points to what he regards, in keeping with a central tenet of phenomenology, as the perspectival nature of each concrete act of reading. A reader always envisions the ‘world’ of the text under a particular interpretation of its elements and gradually constructs the meaning of the story by partial approximations in which what is un-derstood consistently exceeds what is actually read. Since all reading is contingent on some motivating context (see Fillmore 1982) – a body of understandings or a pattern of social and cultural practices against which the creation of a particular text is rendered intelligible –, all comprehension of a literary work is ultimately a negotiation be-tween the interpretative frames imposed by the reader and those sug-gested by the text itself. In Fillmore’s own words,

[a] frame is invoked when the interpreter, in trying to make sense of a text seg-ment, is able to assign it an interpretation by situating its context in a pattern that is known independently of the text. A frame is evoked by the text if some linguis-tic form or pattern is conventionally associated with the frame in question. (Fill-more 1985: 232)

A similar process of negotiation takes place in the framing of the communicative situation between author and reader. As Fillmore ar-gues, it is awareness of “interactional frames” (1982: 117) such as routinized speech events, principles of conversational cooperation and specific genre conventions that allows the reader, already equipped with a set of general assumptions, to collaborate with a particular

The (Dis)Continuity of Framings 331

work and gradually re-adjust his/her expectations in response to the clues provided by the relevant textual and paratextual information.

Within the larger project of a cognitive poetics, C. Emmott’s con-textual frame theory proposes an account of the process of plot under-standing, with particular emphasis being placed on the specific nature of the interpretative and inferential work a reader has to do in order to fill in informational gaps and establish the factual ‘world’ of the text. By permanent contextual monitoring, readers gather information about which characters are present and active in each narrative sequence and stock it as mental representations which Emmott terms “contextual frames” (2003: 146). Whereas the primed frame actualizes the main action as it unfolds, the secondary ramifications of the plot are cognitively processed by various projected frames, which also take on the supplementary function of allowing situations to be “re-evaluated in the light of additional information from another context” (ibid.: 148). The process of text comprehension is conceptualized as the combined result of within-frame/cross-frame inferences and frame assumptions based on general world knowledge, genre conventions, and the specific circumstances indicated by the text.

Both Fillmore and Emmott underline the importance of negotiation in selecting the cognitive frames which are deemed relevant for inter-preting a (literary) text. The readers know that the author has intended them to recognize and decode paratextual and textual signals which they further confront with previously acquired knowledge about liter-ary conventions and practices, with the consequence that, ideally, textual clues and contextual information contribute together to the emergence of the sense of the text. But neither Fillmore nor Emmott consider the correlation – or lack thereof – between abstract cognitive frames and concrete textual framings. The implication behind Fill-more’s distinction between “invoked” and “evoked” frames seems to be that, in the former case, the choice of a particular frame is simply not prompted by the text, whereas in the latter the readers somehow come to identify the linguistic forms and patterns traditionally asso-


ciated with specific frames. For a large amount of literary works this process may function smoothly enough, but there are texts – among them, Cortázar’s “Continuity of Parks” – which explore and exploit the consequences of the reverse situation, when remarkably few con-crete textual framings can be shown to correspond to the cognitive frames which they are believed to evoke and expected to motivate.

Under the prevalent interpretation, J. Cortázar’s “Continuity of Parks” is considered indicative of postmodernism’s concern with on-tological issues and deliberate disregard of ontological discipline (see McHale 1987: 120). As such, the story is read for its experimental quality, as an exercise in impossible-worlds fiction. A cognitive ana-lysis of “Continuity of Parks” focused on the process of plot under-standing will be expected, on the other hand, to scrutinize the transi-tional points in the story and attempt to explain why the readers tend to draw the particular inferences they do, not necessarily warranted by the text, to the effect that they construe the story as illustrating the conflation of two normally non-interacting referential levels. On his/ her first encounter with the story, the unsuspecting cognitively-mind-ed reader identifies a primed metafictional ‘reading a novel’ frame which projects two peripherally treated retrospective frames (‘business meeting’ and ‘conducting practical affairs’), and then a second primed frame, ‘planning a murder’. Since the latter seems to be an autonomous narrative, easily noticed to recount events that take place on a different ontological level, the text is likely to be recognized as a story-within-the-story. Yet, it is the very last sentence that invites a radical reassessment of the situation, as it leaves open the possibility for the man reading a novel in the diegetic story to be identified with the man, also reading a novel, who is about to be murdered in the em-bedded, hypodiegetic novel. What has seemed at first mere background detail – the great windows and the high-backed armchair covered in green velvet – is re-evaluated by the reader as of central importance and is further joined with grammatical evidence (the use


of the definite article in the phrase “the man in the chair”1 suggesting anaphoric reference to a character already known) in order to infer the crucial co-referentiality on which the surprise effect of the story de-pends.

If thus construed, the protagonist’s experience gives a paradoxically literal significance to the ancient topos de te fabula narratur. More interestingly, it substantiates the claim that the story contains a salient instance of metalepsis, understood not as a complex trope (i.e. a figure of discourse), but rather as the device pertaining to the transgression of ontologically distinct fictional ‘worlds’. It is G. Genette who, in his Discours du récit (Genette 1972), makes out a case for this acceptation of ‘metalepsis’ and explicitly mentions “Continuity of Parks” in order to illustrate such potentially unsettling border-crossings between diegetic and ‘metadiegetic’ (i.e. hypodiegetic) levels of representation.

One is tempted to argue, though, that while Cortázar’s story clearly counts on this particular kind of reading, it never sanctions it un-equivocally. It is the readers who make cross-frame inferences based on contingent proof and choose to identify the two reading men as the same character. And they do so disregarding what might have counted as evidence to the contrary: the non-congruity of the places where the action unfolds (study vs. salon), the use of the indefinite article in the last reference to a high-backed armchair, indicative, one may suppose, of mere coincidence, and the unfulfilled promise of the title. The oak park is conspicuously absent from the embedded story, possibly as an intimation that there is no continuity of fictional ‘worlds’, as indeed the reader knows there cannot be. There is, instead, the more powerful continuity of writing which sustains the illusion. In an assessment of the relevance of the concept of ‘possible world’ for literature and the arts, U. Eco challenges the claim that impossible worlds are only ‘possible’ in visual languages and argues that, although present in both, “with visual languages illusion is a short term process since

1 All English quotations are taken from the online translation.


visual signs are spatially displayed all together – while with verbal language the temporal (or spatial) linearity of the signifiers makes the recognition of inconsistency more difficult” (Eco 1989: 353). Indeed, a trompe-l’oeil effect of the kind produced by “Continuity of Parks” is further sustained by the fact that the reading process functions piecemeal and requires a certain amount of time to complete – just the time needed for some details to become blurred and certain questions to be forgotten. The real reader follows the fictional reader as he makes his way through the final part of the novel with the good faith induced by the often confirmed expectations about fictional worlds which, when well-behaved, are discrete and non-interacting, and does not take the time to scrutinize the text in order to find the discursive breaking point which would confirm the referential separation he/she takes for granted. Hence, the surprise experienced when the ‘onto-logical-trespassing’ hypothesis can suddenly be envisaged.

A claim can be made that the effectiveness of the ending depends essentially on the (as one expects, deliberate) effacing of physical framings. Indeed, the text activates the cognitive frame ‘reading fic-tion’ and, from within it, but pointing to a different ‘ontological’ level, two others – ‘reading a novel’ and ‘expecting its denouement’ –, and thus configurates a dual referential domain. But the concrete marks of separation at the level of discourse – the framing vs. the framed discourse – are conspicuously absent. The only obvious graphic indication of a discontinuity in the text, the new paragraph which begins after the sentence “It was beginning to get dark”, cannot be trusted to mark the borderline between the framing and the framed story, as one recognizes, before and after it, the same voice, perspec-tive and object of focalisation. The change of narrative voice, if at all possible to point out, is to be located in the first compact paragraph of “Continuity of Parks”. After a fairly heterodiegetic beginning, with the narrator in the framing narrative ‘telling the story’ about the char-acter reading a novel, one is confronted – in the passage which fol-lows the sentence “he was witness to the final encounter in the moun-


tain cabin” – with a narratological dilemma. On one possible reading, the fragment, “[t]he woman arrived first […] liberty pounded, hidden close”, will be interpreted as an unmarked quotation from the murder story and will be attributed to the narrator in the embedded story. It is obvious, though, that by choosing to read this way, one imposes rather than discovers the physical framing of the inner text (there are, after all, no visible quotation marks), a decision which becomes difficult to follow consistently later on when the constraint may appear to allow for the coexistence, in the same sentence, of fragments of discourse belonging to the first and to the second narrator. While the proposi-tion, “[a] lustful panting dialogue raced down the pages like a rivulet of snakes”, will normally be ascribed to the narrator in the framing story, as it provides an outsider’s comment on the form of (what has been taken as) the embedded discourse, the second half of the sen-tence (“and one felt it had all been decided from eternity”) remains ambiguous and can be claimed by either narrative voice. If attributed to the first, the whole sentence appears as the intrusion of the framing discourse on the framed narrative; if ascribed to the second (which may seem the more likely choice considering the logical connection with the content of the following sentence), the untenable outcome is that the splitting point between discourses appears to be located in the middle of the sentence. It can hardly be overstressed, however, that this line of interpretation can be pursued at all only if the readers con-strue “Continuity of Parks” as a collage (in which the text of the mur-der story is tacitly pasted on the text of the short story), and thus ‘per-form’ the existence of the physical framings to be matched with the relevant cognitive frames.

On yet another reading of “Continuity of Parks”, the now well-advised reader may wish to pay closer attention to previously ignored data and wonder if, like the protagonist himself, he/she has not pur-sued too single-mindedly a mimetic line of interpretation in focusing exclusively on the ‘facts’ mentioned or implied by the text. The acti-vation of a different set of cognitive and interactional frames can re-


contextualize the story and render it significant against the pattern (itself a conventionally established interpretative frame) of the naïve vs. the well-informed reading. The incipit of the text evokes three reading-related frames – ‘novel to be read on the train’, ‘reading for entertainment’ and ‘reading for the plot’ – the associations of which induce the real reader to pay closer attention to the intradiegetic rea-der’s response to the piece of fiction he reads. From the very begin-ning, the protagonist “permit[s] himself a slowly growing interest in the plot”; later on, when he resumes the reading, he remembers “ef-fortlessly the names and his mental image of the characters; the novel spread[s] its glamour over him almost at once”. One is interested to notice how Paul Blackburn’s English translation frames the reading process in a way which is significantly different from that in the Spanish original. The clash between two conflicting theories of read-ing can be recognized behind the translator’s attempted over-accuracy in rendering “las imágenes de los protagonistas” (Cortázar 1976: 7) as “his mental image of the characters” [my emphasis]: the ‘correction’ only makes sense within a conceptualization of the process of reading as self-reflexive, with the reader being keenly aware of the subjective nature of his/her interaction with the text. The translation of “la ilusión novelesca lo ganó” (ibid.) as “the novel spread its glamour over him” seems, on the other hand, rather more difficult to account for. It fails to notice how “the contributions that word meanings make to text comprehension are sometimes very deeply backgrounded” (Fillmore 1985: 237) and prevents the English reader from recognizing in the phrase “the novelistic illusion” the reference to the ability of literature to create the ‘illusion of life’ (to the “concept of aesthetic illusion”2) and, as a still farther echo, Plato’s warning against the perils behind the enthralling power of representation. Besides, in the Spanish “lo ganó” (“it won him”) one can read the implication of some resistance being put up by the protagonist before “letting himself be absorbed to 2 For a discussion of “Continuity of Parks” as “a metafictional demonstration of the workings of aesthetic illusion” see Wolf, forthcoming.


the point where the images settled down and took on colour and mo-vement”. The temptation to give in to a world of illusion which ac-quires a bewitching life-like quality is irresistible, but the pleasure derived from it feels “almost perverse”. Close by lurk Roland Barthes’ reflections on the distinction between texte de plaisir and texte de

jouissance (see Barthes 1973), with the latter providing the ‘perverse’ pleasure of sheer purposelessness. But this is not the kind of pleasure the fictional reader seeks: he is simply engrossed in, and finally effectively engulfed by, the plot. The protagonist’s jouissance seems to be prompted by the wrong type of text. Not so that of Cortázar’s readers, who luxuriate blissfully in the many-layered divergent interpretations the story elicits.

And, if still on the quest for relevant framings on the level of dis-course, the readers may approach “Continuity of Parks” from a Bakh-tinian perspective and consider the consequences which the recogni-tion of its plurivocality has on the decision of whether to ascribe it to the genre ‘frame story’ at all. It is the awareness of the irreducible plurality of voices which only writing makes possible in its fullness that lies at the heart of Bakhtin’s theory of language and of his con-ception of ‘novelistic discourse’ (in a sense that is comprehensive enough to accommodate short fiction as well; see Bakhtin 1981). Al-though all discourse is plurivocal to some degree (it is heteroglossia, penetration of another’s words into one’s own, mixture of tones, over-tones, foreign accents and values), novelistic discourse – as opposed to ‘prose’, which aims to preserve the neatness of one voice, one utterance – represents the triumph of the multiple over the one, and it allows the reader to hear, though not to give voice to, the dialogic quality of the text. Free indirect discourse is always, essentially, “freed” discourse (Lock 2001: 86): it cannot be said to belong to a speaker, it retains its constitutive two-ness of voice upon voice, which renders it incompatible with the traditional form of the frame story.

But, of course, one readily concedes that Cortázar’s story displays discursive features that go against the grain of what typical frame


stories are believed to be like. (According to the current definition, the concept of ‘frame story’ describes the situation when one or more lower-level narratives are embedded within a distinct larger framing narrative.) Except for the first sentences of “Continuity of Parks”, which one attributes straightforwardly to the narrator in the initial primed frame (not quite straightforwardly, though, because the quali-fying adjectives in “perverse pleasure” and “sordid dilemma” may be ascribed, on equally good grounds, to the fictional reader or, dialogi-cally, to both narrator and character), the rest of the text can be construed, on a Bakhtinian reading, as a very complex instance of free indirect discourse. The whole passage from “[t]he woman arrived first” to the end of the story is now recognized as multiple-voiced, with various degrees of overlapping: the discourse of the narrator in the embedded frame (already permeated with the voices of the two characters planning the murder) will be heard through the discourse of the narrator in the primed frame, and as mediated by the conscious-ness – and muted voice – of the fictional reader. Metaleptic transgres-sions are blocked this way, as the protagonist will be reading, to the end, somebody else’s story. The real readers are presented with the fictional worlds duly separated, with no co-referentiality inferences being warranted backwards from the framed to the framing story, but the cultivation of such radically heteroglossic discourse results in the emergence of a mixture of voices which renders futile all efforts to secure clear boundaries between the narrators’ and the characters’ discourses.

Irrespective of the relative degree of importance attached, at vari-ous times, to the framing discourse as compared to the framed narra-tives, the rôle of the former has constantly been seen as that of con-taining the latter – of incorporating and simultaneously of keeping at a discursive and referential distance the embedded stories. It is experi-mental, metafictional writing of the type represented by “Continuity of Parks” that unsettles this mode of understanding and points to its limitations, because such texts resist containment: they disobey the


chronotopic discipline of the genre, play on ontological ambiguities and question the relevance (and very existence) of the distinction between the framing and the framed narrative. When, as in Cortázar’s “Continuity of Parks”, no unequivocal breaking point between the two can be indicated, locating the borderline becomes a matter of perspec-tive and identifying a correspondence between cognitive frames and textual framings, the result of imposition, rather than discovery. There is no comfortable satisfaction of the recognition of the familiar in “Continuity of Parks” – there is, instead, the thrill of performance and multi-faceted comprehension.

References

Bakhtin, Mikhail (1981). The Dialogic Imagination. M. Holquist, C. Emerson, eds. Austin, TX: Univ. of Texas Press.

Barthes, Roland (1973). Le Plaisir du texte. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Cortázar, Julio (1976). “Continuidad de los parques” (1956). Julio

Cortázar. Los relatos. Juegos. El Libro de Bolsillo. Madrid: Alian-za Editorial. 7-8.

—. “Continuity of Parks”. http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~paulvig/ hopscotch/parks.html.

Eco, Umberto (1989). “Report on Session 3: Literature and Arts”. Sture Allén, ed. Possible Worlds in Humanities, Arts and Sciences: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 65. Berlin: Gruyter.

Emmott, Catherine (2003). “Reading for Pleasure: A Cognitive Poetic Analysis of ‘Twists in the Tale’ and Other Plot Reversals in Narra-tive Texts”. J. Gavins, G. Steen, eds. Cognitive Poetics in Practice. London: Routledge. 146-159.

Fillmore, Charles (1982). “Frame Semantics”. Linguistics in the Morning Calm. Seoul: Hanshin Publishing. 111-137.

— (1985). “Frames and the Semantics of Understanding”. Quaderni di Semantica 6/2: 222-255.

Genette, Gérard (1972). Figures III. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Lock, Charles (2001). “Double Voicing, Sharing Words: Bakhtin’s

Dialogism and the History of the Theory of Free Indirect Dis-course”. Jorgen Bruhn, Jan Lundquist, eds. The Novelness of Bakhtin: Perspectives and Possibilities. Copenhagen: Tusculanum. 71-87.


McHale, Brian (1987). Postmodernist Fiction. London: Routledge. Wolf, Werner. “Aesthetic Illusion as an Effect of Fiction”. Style 38/3:

325-351.

Frames and Framings in Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair

Margarete Rubik

Jasper Fforde’s cult novel The Eyre Affair presents a story world radically diverg-ing from known reality, featuring such fantastic properties as time travel, a differ-ent historical development and the possibility to change the past, and the dissolu-tion of the borderline between reality and fiction, so that characters migrate in and out of well-known literary texts. Such third order informativity presents a formi-dable cognitive challenge to the reader. As is appropriate to its zany content, the novel also plays with paratextual framings: what looks like contextual framing is, in fact, part of the text world; what looks like authenticating material in the epi-graphs preceding each chapter is taken from spurious sources, yet still fulfils an important function in providing essential background information about the alien inventory of the fictional universe. Besides, these authorised framings, as well as the excerpts from reviews reprinted on the blurb, hint at the novel’s superordinate goal of postmodern play and prepare readers for a frame of mind which helps them decode the exuberant blending of genres, the hilarious use of trivialising scripts to rewrite well-known text frames and the sustained tone of parody and pastiche with which the novel constantly deconstructs its own frames.

“...almost everything one can think of can be bent and stretched, I include, of course,

space, time, distance and reality...” (Fforde 2001: 231)

Let us start our considerations with three basic cognitive conditions: 1) We process literature in the same way as normal reading1. 2) When we read, we assume, at least initially, that a principle of

“minimal departure” (Ryan 1980; 1991: 48-60) is in operation and that the fictional world shares the same properties as the actual world (see Semino 1997: 64).

1 Cognitive poetics sees “reality and fiction not as cognitively separate, but as phenomena that are processed fundamentally in the same way” (Stockwell 2002: 152). This is irrespective of an acceptance of general literary conventions and generic conventions.

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3) When we decode information, we hence rely on a “belief in the nature of time and continuity and reversible as opposed to irre-versible change” (Cook 1994: 26).

How can we then understand a novel that restricts accessibility (see Stockwell 2002: 95) not only with regard to its inventory (the cloned species, the unprecedented literature hype) but also with regard to time and nature (it dispenses with the space-time continuum and the ontological difference between fact and fiction)?

Radical deviance from normal experience in fantasy or science fic-tion necessitates “an increase in the amount of explicit reference to background knowledge needed for interpretation” (Cook 1994: 26). Texts which, like Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair (2001), operate with “third order informativity” (Stockwell 2002: 80), i.e., portray a fictional reality radically at odds with our normal world schemata, thus need specific framing2.

Focussing on The Eyre Affair I will deal with frames in two senses: with paratextual framings3, and, secondly, with cognitive frames to explain how we can imagine Fforde’s fantastic world.

The Eyre Affair consciously and playfully exploits paratextual framings. In 2001, when the book was first published, all the informa-tion available on the novel was some brief internet information about its unusual plot. Now that The Eyre Affair has become a cult book, this scant information has been supplemented by a fully fledged Fforde website, complete with interviews with the author, explana-tions of the text, a key to intertextual references and Goliath Company merchandise (see http://www.jasperforde.com).

2 Bateson (1955/1972: 190) has pointed out that fantasy or myth are particularly in need of framings. For the problematic relationship between mimesis and fantasy see Dolezel 1988.

3 Wolf 1999: 133 defines framings as “easily identifiable markers existing in the immediate context or in the work itself previous to the reader’s framing activity and indeed serve as its basis”.

Frames and Framings in Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair 343

However, few readers, except, perhaps, students who must write a paper, will start their reading by checking the web page of the author. The title and blurb are more likely sources of information. Although the title, The Eyre Affair, promises a link to Jane Eyre and has vague connotations of espionage and crime (especially Conan Doyle’s clas-sic crime fiction ‘affairs’, see Anderson), the reference is too unspe-cific to allow a guess at the content. The picture on the jacket of the hardback edition of a book turning into a doorway is, of course, a very specific hint at the Prose Portal which allows the heroine, Thursday Next, to walk into Brontë’s novel. A full deciphering, however, is only possible in retrospect, since the reader is likely to interpret the image metaphorically rather than literally: the idea of bodily intruding into a literary text is a fantastic script few readers are likely to draw on. Still, this picture is more informative than the bird on a scooter in the paperback edition, which only after a reading will be recognised as a dodo, one of the revived species of the reversed extinction pro-gramme inhabiting the world of The Eyre Affair4.

More substantial information is to be gained from the brief ex-cerpts from reviews on the paperback blurb, promising that the reader will be “‘catapulted in and out of truth and imagination’ [...] The

Times” and ought to forget “‘the rules of time, space, and reality’ [...] Sunday Telegraph”. A brief glimpse of the plot is given as well, and suggestions for generic classification: “‘postmodernism played as raw, howling farce’ Independent”, a mixture of “‘Douglas Adams [author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy], Lewis Carroll [...]’ Time

Out” and “‘Monty Python [...]’ Independent”. Such descriptions will activate cognitive frames keyed to a reading of the book as satire, fantasy and antic humour.

4 Similarly, the jackets of the sequels, Lost in a Good Book and The Well of Lost Plots, give little help for pre-reading guesses. The image of the maze is actually mis-leading, though the mammoth on the paperback cover is at least more recognisable than the dodo, and fans of the series will remember Thurday’s predilection for stylish sports cars.

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While these textual framings are “extracompositional” (see Wolf’s introduction to this volume) since they largely lie outside the control of the author, other paratextual material is “intracompositional” and was evidently designed by Fforde himself. At a first reading, we may well overlook the inconspicuous stamp on the page with the (conven-tional) dedication to his deceased father, which on closer inspection purports to be the official licensing of the book’s typography and binding by the Goliath Company, with a warning that “misuse of the Goliath Company’s products or services may interfere with you and your family’s continued rights to health, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. The sinister threat, as well as its absurd intertextual ech-oes, are a spirited introduction to the world of the novel. What looked like framing material in fact turns out to be part of fictional reality, one of the many spoof pieces of information hidden in textual frames.

The notification “The End?” (Fforde 2001: 375), of course, ques-tions the very closure it seems to announce. Indeed, on the very next page the author promises that “[t]he adventures of Thursday Next continue...” (ibid.: 377). Subsequently, the reader finds him- or herself staring at the title page of this sequel, Lost in a Good Book, and is jolted right into its middle, namely chapter 14, Thursday’s interview with the Cheshire Cat, as a promotional gag (ibid.: 381-384). The zany framing is completed by two advertisements: one for a Dodo emporium (cf. ibid.: 385) and one a Toast promotion ad by the “offi-cially accredited sponsors of the Swindon Literary Detection Depart-ment” (i.e., the agency where Thursday works) (ibid.: 387). Again, we are still in the storyworld of the novel, although we expected a pop into our own (that is, a deictic shift back to our real life level as readers [see Stockwell 2003: 47]).

If we briefly continue with a survey of textual framings, the chap-ter titles contain plenty of allusions to Jane Eyre, Haworth, Martin Chuzzlewit and, more enigmatically, to Polly flashing “upon the in-ward eye” (ch. 11) (of Wordsworth, that is), without giving definitive clues as to the plot. More significant for the processing of the text are


the epigraphs which precede each chapter and purport to be taken from a variety of authenticating textual genres, such as history books, newspaper interviews, personal letters etc., and fulfilling two pur-poses: Fforde claims he wanted to create an aura of bygone days (back in 1985, when the action is set), “when you could buy home-cloning kits over the counter” (http://www.jasperforde.com). More impor-tantly, of course, they allowed Fforde “to convey ideas that would otherwise have to be boring expositional dialogue...” (ibid.). Thus we are briefly introduced to background information on the Special Ope-rations network – some kind of secret service in which the heroine is employed –, the events leading to the establishment of the People’s Republic of Wales, and the pre-1985 existence of a character called Mr. Quaverley in Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit – before the poor chap was kidnapped from the novel and murdered. These snatches of infor-mation, however, are not enough for orientation in a radically defam-iliarised fictional universe and have to be supplemented in the text proper by such additional text-world building devices as characters watching the TV news or being let in on ‘classified’ intelligence.

Despite the epigraphs’ aura of authenticity, the content as well as the authors and titles of the spurious scientific material quoted will, of course, put any informed reader on his or her guard. Some of the his-tory books and biographies quoted from were written by one Millon De Floss; the arch villain Acheron Hades entitled his autobiography Degeneracy for Pleasure and Profit; and vampire hunter Spike Stoker is interviewed, appropriately, in Van Helsing’s Gazette. The epigraphs are thus not at all markers of value and scientific information, but part and parcel of the fictional world of The Eyre Affair and clearly suggest a parodic frame and a reading of the novel as a grand literary joke.

Discussion of the paratextual framings has already led us to a consid-eration of the cognitive frames activated in a reading of The Eyre

Affair. From the very first sentence, we are catapulted head over heels into an unfamiliar universe:

346 Margarete Rubik

My father had a face that could stop a clock. I don’t mean that he was ugly or anything; it was a phrase the ChronoGuard used to describe someone who had the power to reduce time to an ultra-slow trickle. (Fforde 2001: 1)

How can readers process the concepts of stopping time and of time travel, parallel universes, alternative developments in history and the idea of changing history, and the dissolution of the border between fact and fiction?

Since we think of time as linear and progressive, time travel is no serious cognitive problem. We equate temporal with spacial move-ment and employ an image schema (i.e., a mental picture) of a trajec-tory on a path RIGHT/LEFT or UP/DOWN into the past and future. And stopping the progression of time (so that all the people on the scene are suddenly immobilised) has become familiar from freeze frame film technique. The idea of a ‘rent’ in the fabric of time which sucks people and vehicles into its vortex is slightly more complicated, since it suggests a multi-dimensional space/time model. By the way, hurricanes whirling people away are not unknown as means of trans-portation from one world to another, as readers of The Wizard of Oz

will remember, and ‘wormholes’, i.e., deformations in the space/time continuum on the level of quantum physics, have long been appropri-ated by Science Fiction for space travel. Fforde plays on our vague knowledge of the theory of relativity as regards, for instance, the sud-den slowing down of time in the gravity field of the time rent, but here or elsewhere makes no serious effort to give a (pseudo) scientific explanation (called by Fforde himself “parlour semi-physics” [http:// www.jasperforde.com]). On the contrary, the fantastic Prose Portal, with which I will deal below, is gleefully accounted for in terms of genetically manipulated book worms and some high tech hocus-pocus.

Once the permeability of time and time travel have been accepted as a possibility, this will also allow for a confrontation of various versions of self by means of time-slipping, for instance when Thurs-day sees a future version of herself in a sports car that is endowed with several months of additional experience and can therefore give her instructions what to do next. The same scene is later narrated once


more from the perspective of this later version of Thursday, who is sucked through a time rent and briefly finds herself vis-à-vis her old self in a hospital ward. Such imaginative games have been played by Stanislav Lem before and crop up even in Harry Potter and the

Prisoner of Azkaban, where children evidently have no problem un-derstanding such a time loop.

Time travel also logically entails the possibility of intervention in the past and thereby changing history5. In the alternative world of The

Eyre Affair history has taken a course dissimilar from our own: how-ever, interventions in the course of historical events always result in bringing the text world closer to our version of reality. Thursday’s father, whose favourite dictum is that “Time is out of joint [...] Good job I was born to set it right” (Fforde 2001: 5), saves the Duke of Wellington from a French sniper at the battle of Waterloo and, in a zany postmodern twist, takes Shakespeare’s collected works back into the Elizabethan period and hands them over to the obscure actor. Some historical facts, however, remain dissimilar. The Eyre Affair

describes a uchronian6 universe in which Wales has turned into a so-cialist republic and the Crimean War with zarist Russia is still raging. In fact, during her military service Thursday was involved in the Charge of the Light Armoured Brigade, which, like the 1854 annihila-tion of the Light Cavalry, ended in a military dèbâcle. The postmodern technique of superimposition, when “two familiar spaces are placed one on top of the other, as in a photographic double-exposure” (McHale 1987/1996: 52) is here applied to time: the factual history of the Charge of the Light Brigade and the techniques of modern warfare

5 Again, this possibility is also exploited Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(2004) and, according to Cook (1994: 27), in a Superman story.

6 The term “alternate world” for “an account of Earth as it might have become in consequence of some hypothetical alteration in history” used by Brian Stableford and quoted in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy (Clute/Grant, eds. [1997], s. v. “alternate world”) seems too vague to classify the phenomenon. Rodiek (1997: 25) uses the term “alternative history” or “allohistory” for a uchronia, while Helbig (1988) proposes the term ‘parahistorical’ novel.

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are superimposed upon one another, thereby giving the impression that history repeats itself with a time lag in Fforde’s text world.

Possible-world theories in philosophy and text-world theories in literature, and their possible relation to one another7, are complex, controversial and occasionally bewildering to the layman; however, to a reader uchronias are no serious cognitive problem. Since we our-selves constantly engage in reviewing our past and conjecturing what might have happened if we had acted differently, it is not difficult to engage in similar fantasies with regard to historical personages. To be sure, any uchronia implicitly presupposes a certain historical and cul-tural knowledge in order to be effective:

Eine Uchronie setzt ja beim Rezipienten bestimmte Kenntnisse voraus. Sie funk-tioniert auf der Basis eines impliziten ‘kulturellen Wissens’, gegen das die kontra-faktischen Daten systematisch verstoßen. (Rodiek 1997: 113)

In fact, the deviations from known history in The Eyre Affair are so outrageous that any reader will be able to spot them: despite com-paigns for devolution, Wales has not seceded from Great Britain; wars are fought elsewhere today, but not on the Crimea; and though genetically manipulated food may be cause for concern, the banana, at least, was not sequenced by one Anna Bannon.

Besides these oddities in the concepts of time and history, the most obvious anomaly in the storyworld of The Eyre Affair is the enormous prestige and emotional impact of art in general and canonical literature in particular – envisaged in terms of scripts borrowed from such diverse fields as pop culture, football riots and drug trafficking. We encounter Surrealists barricading themselves in the N’est pas une pipe

pub against militant Raphaelites, thousands of fans changing their

7 Whereas Bertrand Russell, Saul Kripke and John Searl have emphasised the boundary between reality and fiction, “throwing a sort of logical and ontological cordon sanitaire around fiction”, possible-world theorists in poetics have acknowl-edged that “fiction’s epidermis [...] is not an impermeable but a semipermeable mem-brane” (McHale 1987/1996: 34).


names to John Milton and even kids swapping Fielding bubble-gum cards: one Sophia for one Alworthy plus Tom Jones and Amelia.

To top it all, Thursday’s uncle, a scientific genius, has invented the so-called Prose Portal, which opens the door into any literary text, allowing people to enter bodily into it. Walking through this portal henceforth functions as a kind of “intratextual framing” (see Wolf, introduction) signalling to the reader that the fictional characters in-trude into a different text world (although there are other means of ingress into these worlds which again take readers by surprise). Doors, of course, suggest a familiar INTO/OUT OF image schema allowing us to visualise this access to alternative text worlds in terms of ordinary experience. In The Eyre Affair, however, we do not simply enter a fictional sub-world newly invented by Fforde, but are taken on an intertextual transworld travel to storyworlds which exist outside and independent of the novel we are reading and which were created by different authors8.

Although readers tend to project themselves deictically into story-worlds, suspending disbelief of the illusionary nature of fictional real-ity and empathetically engaging with the characters as if they were real, the ontological difference between actual and literary worlds is still fundamental to our experience, and Jane Eyre, Martin Chuzzlewit

or “I wandered lonely as a cloud” are clearly marked as literary texts even in the world of The Eyre Affair, i.e., they represent fictional worlds within the fictional reality of the novel, which ought to fore-close a physical access. Indeed, when this kind of jump into a literary text is first suggested, conceptualisation is eased by putting it down to

8 Again, the Harry Potter series offers itself for comparison: in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) Harry slips into the diary of Lord Voldemort. However, we remain within the fictional universe created by Rowling. Besides, the fact that the whole book is set among magicians, of course, makes it easier to imagine that Harry might be spirited into a magic memoir. In Cornelia Funke’s Tintenherz(2003) one of the protagonists can read real characters into, and fictional characters out of, story books, but again we remain within the fictional universe of Funke's fantasy novel.

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an imaginary, rather than physical activity. Thursday herself takes her first meeting with Rochester to be “the product of an overactive imagi-nation” (Fforde 2001: 69), the daydream of a child when “the barrier between reality and make-believe had not yet hardened into the shell that cocoons us in adult life” (ibid. 63). However, since she causes a very substantial change in Brontë’s novel – when she suddenly materi-alises, she forces Rochester’s horse off the path and onto the icy patch where it slips – the reader can only downgrade the anomaly outwards by assuming that a fantastic schema is in operation (see Stockwell 2002: 80f.).

In The Eyre Affair famous fictional characters like Rochester as-sume a “transworld identity”9 and migrate metaleptically10 into the actual text world to save Thursday, and vice versa, crossover charac-ters from the 20th-century world of the novel suddenly burst into the narrative of canonical texts – and this, indeed, is even more provoca-tive “to our normal literary intuitions”11. The reader of The Eyre Affair

has to deal with a split ontology (see Ryan 1992: 539), a “pluri-regional” (Martinez-Bonati 1983: 193) world which contains side by side Thursday’s actual text world and the text worlds of various well-known literary works.

The situation is complicated by the fact that some of the well-known literary texts mentioned in The Eyre Affair resemble, but are not identical with, the canonical versions we know. The alternative historical developments in fictional reality find a parallel in the alter-native plot developments of world literature, though, again, the plots

9 The term was coined by Umberto Eco, see McHale 1987/1996: 57.

10 The term metalepsis was coined by Genette in his “Discours du récit” and signi-fies a toggling (i.e., a shifting back and forth) between the diegetic and the extra- or metadiegetic planes of narration and hence a violation of the borderline between normally separate ontological spheres. Fforde's novel is a showcase of such metaleptic trespassing.

11 McHale (1987/1996: 57 and 58) argues that although intertextual character-transfer abounds in postmodern fiction, “to our normal literary intuitions [...] this device of borrowing characters is not really permissible”.


are ‘normalised’ in the course of the action. I have already mentioned how Thursday brings about the melodramatic first encounter between Rochester and Jane and how Acheron Hades excises Mr. Quaverley from the pages of Martin Chuzzlewit (so that the novel comes to as-sume the form it has in our world). The villain then kidnaps Jane Eyre, with the effect that the book, since it is a first-person narrative, un-writes itself and the pages turn blank. The rules at work in this fictional sub-world of canonical literature are quite logical for literary initiates. What is changed in the first edition effects all other copies. There is no ‘reality’ beyond the one described by the author (thus Millcote exists in the Jane Eyre universe, but London does not). But even though only what is seen and narrated by Jane appears in print, the other characters (despite the fact that they know they are not ‘real’) have a life of their own off-stage (very much in the way of Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) and can engage in any activity in Thornfield once Jane has taken the narrative to Moor House. The ‘secret life’ of Rochester, including guided tours of Thornfield for literary tourists and co-operation with Thursday in the man-hunt, is a constant source of farcical amusement, all the more so since it so obviously violates all the rules we were taught as students as to the illegitimacy of such conjectures. In a delightful anticlimax to romantic notions of the lovers’ mental affinity the famous telepathic message from Rochester Jane receives when she is on the point of marrying St. John Rivers is disclosed as the work of the wily Thurs-day, who hoarsely calls out Jane’s name outside Moor House to engi-neer the happy ending Charlotte Brontë so regrettably botched in the ‘original’ version.

Re-plotting, cognitive psychologists claim, is a typical psychologi-cal response to a fictional text in which readers consider the alterna-tives to the real events12. Part of the charm of The Eyre Affair derives

12 “I intend replotting to cover the full range of p-responses [i.e., participatory responses] in which readers consider alternatives to the real events, with whatever motivation.” (Gerring 1993: 91)

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from the large-scale re-plotting of canonical literature it engages in. The suspense created thereby is “anomalous”13 in the sense that, of course, we know how Jane Eyre must end, yet watch enthralled how Thursday brings this about against all odds. The joke consists in re-pairing the Jane Eyre frame, but using incongruous, trivialising scripts to get there, especially in those scenes which have been criticised as Gothic melodrama: a voice imitation instead of a telepathic summons, a runaway criminal setting fire to Thornfield Hall, not an enigmatic madwoman. On the other hand, however, Bertha, who stabs Hades with her silver scissors, gives Thursday the decisive clue that a silver bullet might be the means of exorcising the evil-doer – so that Gothic sensationalism is replaced tongue-in-cheek by an even more preposterous script from folk superstition14.

Scripts are “socioculturally defined mental protocol[s]” (Stockwell 2002: 77) for negotiating situations; they consist of props, partici-pants, entry conditions, results, and a sequence of events15. Typically, Fforde will call up specific literary frames, but farcically meddle with their scripts. Let us consider a second, similar example: the hilarious scene when Thursday’s scientific uncle sends his wife into Words-worth’s poem “Daffodils”. As in the case of Jane Eyre, entry condi-tions are literal instead of merely imaginative – which, of course, makes all the difference. Polly, absurdly, walks into the poet’s private memory (in itself a contradiction in terms). The props are familiar enough: thousands of daffodils by the lakeside, and the 80-year-old

13 Ibid.: 79; Gerring emphasises that “readers often experience suspense even when they know what will happen [...]”.

14 “There are lots of [European] stories in which [silver bullets] are the only way to kill some supernatural enemy. Werewolves were believed to have been given the power to change form by the Devil in return for acting as his servants. Nothing ordi-nary could kill one – only a silver bullet would do it. Basically, what a stake through the heart was to a vampire, a silver bullet was to a werewolf.” (Quinion)

15 See Stockwell: 2003: 78. For a systematic survey of schema theory see Rummel-hart 1980.


bard brooding in “vacant and pensive mood” – only now there is a new unwarranted participant16.

I think Wordsworth was as surprised to see me as I was him. It can’t be usual to go to your favourite memory only to find someone already there, admiring the view ahead of you. (Fforde 2001: 123)

The result of the invasion is certainly surprising: Mr. W. develops a love interest in Thursday’s old aunt (ibid. 236) and confesses to her that “solitude is not always blissful” (ibid. 127). The whole scenario defamiliarises whatever we may have learned in our Romantic poetry classes, yet it depends on this very knowledge for its effects, since parody both debunks and enforces the model it feeds on. Schema refreshment and schema reinforcement thus exist side by side.

In fact, the novel is both parody (in the sense of ‘a mode of imita-tion in a subversive form’) and pastiche (see James), in the sense of a non-subversive borrowing, “a patchwork of quotations, images, mo-tifs, mannerisms or even whole fictional episodes” which “may be used to stress the ironic awareness that language, literary forms, themes and motifs regularly come to the writer in, so to speak, second-hand form” as traditions and conventions which “stubbornly refuse to be forgotten” (Burden 1979: 135).

The book thrives on the disruptive mixing of normally unrelated world and text schemata. In our experience “[l]iterary detection and firearms don’t really go hand in hand” (Fforde 2001: 139), but in The

Eyre Affair “LiteraTec” Thursday Next is an action heroine. Her anta-gonist Hades is a university lecturer turned criminal (appropriately, he was first arrested “while giving a spirited lecture on John Webster’s The White Devil” [ibid. 26]); he is also a James Bond villain (though only the world’s third most wanted man), an aesthete who commits crimes for crime’s sake but also because he has a Freudian name-complex, a spook invisible on film who can change appearance and

16 Later her husband also slips into the poem and also one of Hades’ henchmen, who sacrilegeously trods on the flowers (cf. Fforde 2001: 231).

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can only be killed with a silver bullet. Frames of parapsychology and fantasy intersect with action films, literary studies, myths and voodoo.

All regions of the narrative world are thus “contaminated (that is, ironised, estranged, verfremdet)” (Martinez-Bonati 1983: 193). The book constantly evokes prototypes, but nothing in it is quite proto-typical. Everything seems déjà vu – but with a twist – down to the rerun of the interrupted wedding, when Briggs, the solicitor, sent on purpose by Rochester to reward Thursday for her help, proves that her lover’s bride is married already and thus opens the way for Thursday’s marriage with her Prince Charming.

Our internal model of the situation depicted in the text must ac-commodate a confusing diversity of schemata all instantiated at the same time17. We are constantly called upon to activate new connec-tions between experiences and form new associative networks18. It is even hard to say what is in the foreground of attention. To be sure, the spotlight is on the heroine, but since the ground against which she moves is constantly shifting, it also demands constant attention. In fact, it is the ground itself, the play with genres, that moves into focus.

Although the novel is popular with a wide audience, it is probably most rewarding to an elitist readership, one which can relish the de-bunking of text schemata through warped scripts and absurd combina-tions. Though some reviewers claim that

readers don’t have to know their classics [...]: familiarity with Jane Eyre makes the story a bit more amusing, but is hardly necessary, and most of the rest of the book can be enjoyed almost as readily by those who have never read any literary work. (Anon.: “Complete Review’s Review”)

The Eyre Affair in fact offers delightfully snobbish enjoyment, “sheer catnip for former English majors” (Miller) and, like several other postmodern novels, depends on “a highly ‘knowing’ reader” (Burden 1979: 136) for full effect. Within one language-community text sche-mata are more reader-variable than language and world schemata, 17 “The total set of schemata instantiated at a particular moment in time constitutes our internal model [...] of the situation depicted in the text.” (Rummelhart 1980: 37)

18 For the Construction-Integration model of cognition see Stockwell 2002: 153f.


since the reading of individuals is likely to differ far more than their experience of the world or language (see Cook 1994: 222); hence the implied readers are primarily students and lovers of literature, who will recognise the host of intertextual references and readily activate word meanings seemingly irrelevant to the context19 (as, e.g., in “quicker than you can say Swift” [Fforde 2001: 256]).

The text generates pleasure because it allows us to engage in speculations normally tabooed in literary interpretation and to indulge in child-like fantasies of participating in the lives of our favourite fictional characters. More importantly, if readers can feel anger at suspense, i.e. at not being able to solve a dilemma (see Gerring 1993: 88), then they ought to feel extreme satisfaction at deciphering the literary crossword puzzle of the ingenious blending of disparate con-cepts. In The Eyre Affair action movies, crime fiction, romance, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, Romantic poetry, Jane Eyre, literary criticism and world knowledge merge into new configurations. A blend generally allows new insights into the input elements20. In this mixture of “low comedy and high erudition” (blurb, from Independ-

ent) however, we are not meant to ‘learn’ anything new about the composition of Jane Eyre, Wordsworth’s emotions recollected in tranquility or even the way how to dispose of spooky mass murderers. Failure to understand the novel’s essentially flippant superordinate goal21 of postmodern play will result in a frustrating search for plaus-ible interpretations of a text which constantly deconstructs its own frames. Of course, the exuberant conflation and playing off against each other of disparate elements is some kind of intratextual framing that implies these parodic goals; they are, however, – and here we

19 On the problem of ‘irrelevant’ meanings see Perfetti 1999.

20 On blending theory see Semino 2002.

21 Perfetti (1999: 196) claims that skilled readers are better able to “make inferences about superordinate goals”. Cf. also Rummelhart 1980: 38: “Readers are said to have understood the text when they are able to find a configuration of hypotheses (sche-mata) that offers a coherent account for the various aspects of the text.”

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come full circle – also encoded in the paratextual framings described in the beginning: both in the intracompositional ones designed by the author himself and in un-authorised ones, such as the reviews on the blurb.

As has been argued, the radical alterity of the storyworld does not really disrupt our text schemata or literary frames, although it views them through an ironic lens, and thereby adds new elements – not to the schema or frame itself, perhaps, but to the network associatively connected with it, since an original will always gain retroactive mean-ing from subsequent activations (performances, reception, rewritings [see Seidl]). After enjoying The Eyre Affair, I will forever see Polly standing on the banks of the lake with Wordsworth, and I will never be able to read Rochester’s telepathic message to Jane or their gruff first meeting without a snickering memory of Thursday’s voice imita-tion or his secret wink at her before he faces the governess and falls back into character.

References

Anderson, Karen G. “Next Time Around”. http://www.januarymagazine.com/crfiction/eyreaffair.html (accessed 6 Nov. 2003).

Anon. “The Complete Review’s Review”. Complete Review The Eyre Affair. http://www. complete-reviews.com/reviews/popgb/ffordej1.html (accessed 6 Nov. 2003).

Bateson, Gregory (1955/1972). Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York, NY: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Burden, Robert (1979). “The Novel Interrogates Itself: Parody as Self-Consciousness in Contemporary English Fiction”. The Con-temporary English Novel. Stratford-upon-Avon Studies 18. 133-155.

Clute, John, John Grant, eds. (1997). The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. London: Orbit.

Cook, Guy (1994). Discourse and Literature: The Interplay of Form and Mind. Oxford: OUP.


Dolezel, Lubomir (1988). “Mimesis and Possible Worlds”. Poetics Today 9/3: 475-497.

Fforde, Jasper (2001). The Eyre Affair. New English Library. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

—. Jasper Fforde website, http://www.jasperforde.com (accessed 1 Feb. 2004).

Genette, Gérard (1972). “Discours du récit. Essai de méthode”. Figures III. Paris: Seuil. 65-282.

Gerring, Richard J. (1993). Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.

Helbig, Jörg (1988). Der parahistorische Roman: Ein literaturhistori-scher und gattungstypologischer Beitrag zur Allotropieforschung. Berliner Beiträge zur Anglistik 1. Frankfurt am Main: Lang.

James, Jarnie. Complete Review. The Eyre Affair. http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/popgb/ffordej1.html (accessed 6 Nov. 2003).

Martinez-Bonati, F. (1983). “Towards a Formal Ontology of Fictional Worlds.” Philosophy and Literature 7: 182-195.

McHale, Brian (1987/1996). Postmodernist Fiction. London: Rout-ledge.

Miller, Laura. Complete Review. The Eyre Affair. http://www.salon.com/books/review/2002/01/24/fforde (accessed 6 Nov. 2003).

Perfetti, Charles (1999). “Comprehending Written Language: a Blue-print of the Reader”. Colin Brown, Peter Hagoort, eds. The Neuro-cognition of Language. Oxford: OUP. 167-208.

Quinion, Michael. “World Wide Words”. http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-sil1.htm (accessed 27 Dec. 2004).

Rodiek, Christoph (1997). Erfundene Vergangenheit: Kontrafaktische Geschichtsdarstellung (Uchronie) in der Literatur. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.

Rummelhart, David E. (1980). “Schemata: The Building Blocks of Cognition”. Rand J Spiro, Bertram C. Bruce, William F. Brewer, eds. Theoretical Issues in Reading Comprehension: Perspectives from Cognitive Psychology, Linguistics, Artificial Intelligence and Education. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 33-58.

Ryan, Marie-Laure (1980). “Fiction, Non-Factuals and the Principle of Minimal Departure”. Poetics Today 9/3: 403-422.

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— (1992). “Possible Worlds in Recent Literary Theory”. Style 26/4: 528-553.

Seidl, Monika (forthcoming). Revisiting Classics: Retroactive Per-formativity as a New Way of Seeing Adaptations of Classics. [Ha-bilitationsschrift Vienna 2003]

Semino, Elena (1997). Language and World Creation in Poems and Other Texts. Textual Exploration Series. London: Longman.

— (2002). “A Cognitive Stylistic Approach to Mind Style in Narrative Fiction”. Elena Semino, Jonathan Culpeper, eds. Cognitive Stylistics: Language and Cognition in Text Analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 95-122.

Stockwell, Peter (2002). Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction. London: Routledge.

Wolf, Werner (1999). “Framing Fiction: Reflections on a Narrato-logical Concept and an Example: Bradbury, Mensonge”. Walter Grünzweig, Andreas Solbach, eds. Grenzüberschreitungen: Narra-tologie im Kontext. Tübingen: Narr. 97-124.

Framing the End

Remigius Bunia

We can distinguish three basic notions of ‘the end’ of a narrative in narratology, which correspond to the distinctions made between discourse, story and text: we can speak of the finality or the close of a discourse, the dénouement of a story, and the delimiters (e.g. the paratexts) of a text in a particular medium. Whatever the text might have to say about its own boundary, it cannot disentangle itself from its material determination. These three concepts, however, do not exist au-tonomously. We can consider their correlation with the help of the terms ‘frame’ and ‘framing’. Although there is a fundamental difference between both concepts, their constitution relies, in some cases, on mutual dependence. Not only does this paper consider the concept of ‘the ending’ as one of these cases, but it assumes that fictionality itself can be described in terms of reciprocal processes. In this analysis, I will call the correlated operations linked to both ending and fictionality ‘transceptions’. I will focus on If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino, a novel that helps to elucidate the concepts of ending by employing a rather pecu-liar strategy of subversion.

1. Drawing the Line

Literary theory focuses more often on beginnings than on endings. It seems to be more natural to examine beginnings of narratives when one is interested in what grants access to literary texts. Obviously, the beginning is considered the gate through which the reader enters the text. A gate, however, is only part of the city-wall securing a text, and the ending is not the exit gate. The exit gate would be nothing but oblivion, nothing but the refusal to consider the text any further. If the beginning is the entrance to a text, the ending can be seen as the place or the time where or when we have accomplished the process of read-ing and comprehended the representation. Our aim is usually not to leave the city again but to conquer it; our ambition is not to abandon the text but to finally gain possession of it. Whereas beginnings ask the reader to enter the text, the ending can be considered as what se-cures it, what defines its final boundary. It is difficult to handle the boundary itself. Sections of a text are more easily discussed than

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boundaries; thus, it is not surprising that it has taken a long time to make out the ‘thresholds’ (cf. Genette 1987/2002) that give access to a text (for example the paratext). But this observation yields the insight that we will have to deal with particular sections of a text and with narratological levels in order to see the frames that make the text and its limits accessible; we cannot cope with the frames ‘as such’.

This problem is related to a standard narratological argument, as we shall see. The narratological key distinction is the one between “story” and “discourse” in Seymour Chatman’s terms (Chatman 1978: 23) or between histoire and récit in Gérard Genette’s terms (I will not take the time here to go into the differences between these theories). Genette adds the narration as the ‘act of narration’ to his system, and Mieke Bal extends Chatman’s terminology with the cate-gory of the “text” (Bal 1985: 5). Taking Genette’s too specific term ‘narration’ in a broader sense and shifting Bal’s expression ‘text’ away from its equally narrow definition, we might define the ‘text’ as the form within a medium such as writing or oral speech (cf. Luhmann 1986/2001: 199-202, Fuchs 2004: 25-30). The media we are consider-ing here must provide a support which carries the form. A book and a canvas provide such a support by dedicating a certain part of them-selves for the text or the picture.

These basic definitions allow us to distinguish between the end of

the story, of the discourse, and of the support provided by the me-

dium1. All of these types of ends2 have their place in literary theory;

1 Kunz (1997) presents a synopsis which is, to some extent, comparable to mine.

2 Noelle Aplevich made me aware of the fact that my use of the word ‘end’ is un-common. One usually speaks of the ‘the end of something’, or else ‘ending’ is the appropriate expression. The word ‘end’, however, designates the furthest point of something, an infinitesimally small threshold, whereas the word ‘ending’ tends to refer to something of a certain extent. Although this is a mere conjecture, it may give a clue to how these words are generally used. At the ‘end’ of a film, we often see the words THE END — and not THE ENDING, because we have just reached the point at which the film ‘terminates’. We do not read THE END OF THIS FILM. As the dif-ference between boundaries and sections is crucial to my argument, I will, in some

Framing the End 361

in the terminological struggle around the word ‘end’, they simply ap-pear under various names. First, there is the story’s logical or conven-tional conclusion, the dénouement. The dénouement refers to conflicts and constellations developed in the story; this term does not simply put a label on the last events of a story but stresses their narrative function3.

The second possibility is to speak of the end of the discourse. It took a rather long time after the publication of Frank Kermode’s im-portant essay on narrative endings (see Kermode 1966/2000) until lit-erary theory developed a technical terminology for endings. The ‘last lines of a novel’ can be called, as Barbara Herrnstein Smith does in an annotation of her outstanding work on endings in poetry, its “finality”(Smith 1968: 45). Philippe Hamon speaks of the “close” (French clau-

sule, see Hamon 1975). This term, used in English for the final part of phrases in music, is also used by Hamon to denote a final segment, but he assumes a threshold between the close of a text and the text leading to the close. If the close of a text is explicitly marked, it is nothing but a ‘peroration’ in the rhetorical sense. Larroux adopts Hamon’s term and attempts to systematize the concept. But he admits that the question remains: “Où commence la fin?” (Larroux 1995: 30) The ‘close’ is thus not a technical term that indicates a particular definite

segment but rather makes us assume a hypothetical line within the text for further discussion. We can thus compare it to Smith’s term ‘finality’ since the point at which the last lines begin remains for her equally ambiguous.

The dénouement, the finality or the close are concepts defined in relation to segments; they are associated with passages of a certain

cases, insist on the word ‘end’ although it does not sound very natural. Still there is no strict terminological difference between ‘end’ and ‘ending’ throughout this article.

3 ‘Narrative logic’ is a highly awkward term unless it is used within quotation marks. I refer to rather general concepts of narrative structure as proposed by Barthes 1966/1985: 175-183, Chatman 1978: 53 (“logic of connection”), Prince 1982: 81-100 (in a version far too rigid), and Bal 1985; I mention here but the most influential authors.

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length4. The third variant of textual ends, the end of support is, how-ever, a boundary. It does not presuppose a linear medium: a picture (which is normally not linearly structured) does not have an end of discourse but, of course, it provides a limited support for the image represented (i.e. an ‘end of support’). The boundary is not directly accessible. It can only be construed from the existence of a difference between text and non-text5 (between picture and non-picture), which makes it necessary for the beginning of non-text to be indicated. This is partially done by the paratext or simply by the (somewhat paratex-tual6) blank which comes after the text or which surrounds the picture (cf. Sandras 1972). The end of support must be indicated by visible or audible markers. To facilitate further discussion, everything that makes the end of support identifiable shall be called ‘delimiters’ and the end of support simply ‘delimitation’. A material book can provide the delimiter7. Sometimes it is also the paratext which constitutes the delimiter (if many texts are collected in one volume or if one text is published in several volumes). Other kinds of delimiters, not men-tioned here, are also conceivable8.

It is not very surprising that theory detaches the story and the dis-course from the support, often leaving it aside, because, as I have pointed out above, it is easier to deal with segments than with bound-aries. Still we have, as a result, one basic distinction between the end-

4 For Larroux, it is difficult but not impossible to determine the extent (cf. Larroux 1995: 30-39 and passim).

5 Lotman describes the difference between text and non-text as a frame (cf. Lotman 1970/1973: 315). For Larroux (1994) the narrative end depends on concepts of frames and framings, but he does not give more than hints.

6 Genette’s term in its original meaning (see Genette 1987/2002) does not have a very high terminological resolution (cf. Stanitzek 2004: 6). Paratexts can be framing borders in the sense of the “Introduction” to this volume.

7 The delimiter clearly is a framing, but maybe not a framing border, i.e. an overt framing, in the sense of the “Introduction” to this volume; it is the difference between medium and non-medium, and, as such, a rather covert marker.

8 The importance of typography has, until recently, been neglected (cf. Wehde 2000 and Nutt-Kofoth 2004).

Framing the End 363

ing as a segment and the end as a borderline (or a point). This distinc-tion was implicitly identified early on as crucial for the discussion of endings, for instance by Barbara Korte (see 1985: 36). However, there is a more fundamental difference which allows us to regroup the as-sociated types of ‘ends’: Werner Wolf proposes a distinction between “frame” and “framing” (Wolf 1999 and the “Introduction” to this vol-ume). The frame discussed here is the fictional world9 that a discourse or any other representation produces. The dénouement and the close are also frames, but frames defined within the frame of narrativity. Conversely, delimiters constitute the framing which indicates that these frames operate. My purpose is to show that the frame of fictional worlds is strongly interwoven with specific terminal frames because all these frames depend on the one and only (though complex) framing provided by the delimiters.

This configuration, however, could raise two questions. First, it could seem necessary to explain what the frame of fictionality is; second, if fictionality can be described as a frame, we could ask for its framing. The latter question is usually put in terms of ‘signposts’ or ‘indices’ of fictionality. However, attempting to give some answers would exceed the scope of this paper10. I therefore restrict myself to an account of those frames or framings which, as “[c]losing brackets” (Goffman 1974/2003: 256), have an immediate effect on fictionality. Of course, this means I would like to contribute, as much as is possi-ble within the limits of this approach, to the discussion of how fiction-ality can be distinguished from non-fictionality. Yet, this approach only focuses on some particular qualities of what is inside the frame of fictionality and on qualities that depend on the existence of an ‘end’. It

does not attempt to enumerate all characteristics of fictionality.

9 The term ‘world’ is widely accepted in different theories of fictionality (cf. Zipfel 2001: 82-90).

10 For an overview of current theories, see Zipfel 2001 and Fludernik 2001. In addi-tion, I would like to point out Cohn 1990 and Genette 1990: 78-88.

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2. Holding the Line

In Italo Calvino’s novel Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore (If on a

winter’s night a traveler), a “Reader” is addressed (as “you”), but soon turns out to be the (male) hero of the book. He starts to read the novel Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore by Italo Calvino. How-ever, the embedded novel suddenly breaks off because his edition of the book is incorrectly bound. In his search for a version that is cor-rectly bound, the Reader reads several other texts, all of which for dif-ferent reasons lack an ending and none of which conclude the story. He meets the female Reader Ludmilla, who is also sometimes ad-dressed as “you”, and in their quest for new texts they get acquainted with several, often strange people who seem to know something about the books the Readers are looking for. Calvino’s novel, which Segre calls a “romanzo della teoria del romanzo” (Segre 1979: 204; cf. Fein-stein 1989: 147), will prove very helpful in sighting and categorizing the manifold approaches to describing narrative endings, the more so because this novel discusses how to cope with novels whose endings suddenly break off.

Dénouements, closes and delimitations obey fairly transparent rules; they are rather ‘straightforward’ concepts of ending. Calvino’s novel contains a short parable about Mohammed’s scribe, Abdullah, who loses his faith when he is free to complete one of the sentences with which God has inspired Mohammed.

The scribe’s collaboration was necessary to Allah, once he had decided to express himself in a written text. Mohammed knew this and allowed the scribe the privi-lege of concluding sentences; but Abdullah was unaware of the powers vested in him. He lost his faith in Allah because he lacked faith in writing, and in himself as an agent of writing.11 (Calvino 1980/1998: 182)

11 “La collaborazione dello scrivano era necessaria ad Allah, dal momento che aveva deciso d’esprimersi in un testo scritto. Maometto lo sapeva et lasciava allo scrivano il privilegio di chiudere le frasi; ma Abdullah non aveva coscienza dei poteri di cui era investito. Perdette la fede in Allah perché mancava la fede nella scrittura, e in se stesso come operatore della scrittura.” (Calvino 1980/2003: 213)

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This parable deals with closure and finality (“concluding sentences”). There can be a profound meaning in a text (which is “Allah”), but it does not rely on closure. As a matter of fact, finality must be provided – technical constraints request its presence. This parable thus deals with the unstable balance between what carries meaning and the meaning itself. A text may refrain from having a deeper meaning; it could be merely entertaining and therefore require no close attention; this means it could be a text which is not about Allah. But if a text is about Allah, there has to be a “scribe” (the author) and, having had his divine inspiration, he is supposed to finish the text. Concluding a sentence is a matter of grammar; concluding a narrative discourse is a matter of ‘narrative logic’. Of course, Allah might in some texts claim the authority to dictate even the last words. Sometimes the scribe, “unaware of the powers vested in him”, dies or just refuses to finish his job, leaving a fragmentary text. Let me trace the parable to its very end. If there is “faith in Allah” (that is faith in meaning), there must be “faith in writing”, which is faith in ‘narrative logic’. Even the best writer must obey some basic rules of story-telling, or else he will not convey the message – that is he will disappoint Allah. There always has to be a close to the text – both to texts about Allah and to less inspired texts. Abdullah would not defile the book by putting down the last words himself. We learn that, generally, the close of a text does not contribute essentially either to the ‘holy’ meaning or to the ‘secular’ meaning.

‘Narrative logic’ can call for several types of conclusions. First, there is the close of the text; second, there is closure. Closure is here considered an aesthetic category12, and it goes without saying that it comes with the vagueness aesthetic categories always have. But this does not mean that the term is altogether imprecise or even dispens-

12 This is meant to clarify the terminology; discussing a text’s aesthetic value, some critics prefer the term ‘completeness’, as for example Richter (cf. 1974: 101) when he – unconvincingly – explains why one ought to dislike Thomas Pynchon’s novel V.

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able13. It is not, however, a narratological category. Closure requires completeness, yet closure refers not to technical completeness but to aesthetic comprehensiveness. Allah endows us with closure if the holy text is at the same time consistent14 and sufficiently opaque to permit interpretation. The third type is dénouement. The dénouement is a hybrid. On the one hand, it follows the narrative structure because, as a resolution of conflicts, it matches the preceding “kernels” (in Chatman’s definition [1978: 53-56]). On the other hand, a solution can only make sense in the medium of meaning; it is up to Allah to decide whether or not the conflicts end. Knowing that Anna is finally dead in War and Peace, the reader can deem superfluous the subsequent information about Levin’s agricultural experiments. So the question of the dénouement is subject to interpretation15 and not only a question of narratological criteria.

Therefore, on the one hand, a text without a dénouement is con-ceivable16. One of the questions in Calvino’s novel thus reads as fol-lows: “Do you believe that every story must have a beginning and an end?”17 (Calvino 1980/1998: 259) Although I suggest a negative re-

13 The term plays an important role in the most notable works on endings, such as Smith 1968, Torgovnick 1981, Korte 1985, and Larroux 1995, but also in debatable studies such as Richter 1974, Miller 1981, or Kotin Mortimer 1985.

14 The term refers to Compagnon 1979 and Luhmann 1995 rather than to linguistic theory; a concept of coherence or consistence is fundamental for the modern Western understanding of reality, according to Blumenberg 1964/1969: 12-13.

15 ‘Interpretation’ means that the rules saying what one is allowed to do with the text are rather weak. We consider the close and the finality as frames, and therefore as specific cognitive schemes. Although I would reserve the term for particular cases, it is possible to say that the close and the finality need cognitive interpretation, i.e. that one must interpret the perceptions to recognize the end.

16 However, a concept of ‘open ends’ as defended by Miller (cf. 1981) does not help to explain different kinds of dénouement. In his excellent study about narrative end-ing, Kunz posits: “No hablaremos aquí de finales ‘abiertos’ o ‘cerrados’: esta dis-tinción, insufficiente ya cuando se refiere a desenlaces (y anacrónica al tratar de la novelística contemporánea), es completamente inadecuada al análisis del cierre.” (1997: 126)

17 “Lei crede che ogni storia debbe avere un principio e una fine?” (Calvino 1980/ 2003: 304)

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sponse with regard to dénouements, the novel feigns to say yes: “In ancient times, a story could end only in two ways: having passed all the tests, the hero and the heroine married, or else they died”18 (Calvi-no 1980/1998: 259). Expressing the same idea, literary theory speaks of these alternatives, marriage and death, and declares this choice as a convention (for a typology of these conventions cf. Torgovnick 1981). Such an explanation raises the question as to what kind of conventions actually exist and how precise their ‘prescriptions’ really are. Calvino’s novel demonstrates what happens if this convention is taken for explicit poetics: after this convention has been mentioned, the Readers are suddenly married without any further details about how their legal union is accomplished: “you are man and wife, Reader and Reader”19 (Calvino 1980/1998: 260); this is all the text says about the matrimonial bond. But even if it were possible to detect either death or marriage by means of sophisticated interpretation at the end of every novel, there would scarcely be any intellectual benefit from such a simplification. In any case, another observation is more important. When Calvino’s novel leaves aside all events contributing to a logical solution of a conflict, it becomes manifest that the last events can be interpreted as the final decisive step in a chronological sequence only

if they are embedded into the development. The marriage at the close of If on a winter’s night a traveler simply is not functional as it does not refer to any conflict. The dénouement and the closure are irrele-vant for accessibility or, to resume the initial metaphor, irrelevant for the conquest of the city. Stories and discourses are complete even though they may be ‘unfinished’ in some sense.

In a linear medium, on the other hand, a text without close and without finality is not conceivable. This fact follows from its linearity. Even if a text allows several different (linear) readings, there has to be at least one close. The most interesting situation is the fragmentary 18 “Anticamente un racconto aveva solo due modi per finire: passate tutte le prove, l’eroe e l’eroina si sposavano oppure morivano.” (Calvino 1980/2003: 304)

19 “Ore siete marito e moglie, Lettore e Lettrice.” (Calvino 1980/2003: 305)

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text which asserts that it is not finished and, simultaneously, that it isfinished. Calvino’s novel once again proves to be very instructive upon such paradoxes. It consists of ten unfinished inner novels whose ends the Readers seek throughout the outer novel. Let us scrutinize the close of one deliberately chosen inner novel.

“I took a step forward, toward Mr. Kauderer, who was buttoning up his felt greatcoat”20 (Calvino 1980/1998: 41). In his “Introduction à l’analyse structurale des récits”, Barthes points out that a phrase such as “buttoning up his felt greatcoat” is supposed to have a narrative function simply because it appears in the discourse (cf. Barthes 1966/1985: 176). In this case the situation announces that something will happen, that the narrator is going to address Mr. Kauderer. As the discourse ends here and as the reader of Calvino’s novel guesses soon

that neither he nor the Reader in Calvino’s novel will ever know the embedded stories’ ‘ends’, a function of this sentence is to highlight the missing dénouement. It does not, however, highlight the missing close, nor the missing delimiter, for both are provided and must be provided.

3. Crossing the Line

How does a reader know that the close begins? We have found that a close requires a delimiter to be recognized as such. This conclusion is neither tautological nor trivial. One can put it differently: a close pre-

supposes an outside although it exists exclusively within a discourse. Inside the fictional world, there are no delimiters, there cannot even be a close. The support the medium provides shows where to obtain all information and lets us know that the source of information, which controls the act of the fictional world’s creation, is strictly limited. However, in a sense which we are going to specify, the fictional world

20 “Io feci un passo innanzi, verso il signor Kauderer che s’abbottonava il pastrano di felpa.” (Calvino 1980/2003: 46)

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does not have any limitation, as the expression ‘world’ emphasizes. It

is, as we shall say, complete. Fictional worlds are complete when the discourse comes to an end.

This completeness I am speaking of is constitutive of fiction and quite different from a “formal completeness” (Smith 1968: 24) such as clo-sure. When a discourse produces a fictional world, this discourse must be defective in some way as the story and the narrated world are certainly not delimited in any respect, though the discourse is. It usu-ally maintains the illusion of temporal infinity. Only a story about the beginning and the end of the universe would suggest temporal limita-tion within the fictional world; or else the reader would have to sup-pose that there is a time before and after the span the story covers even if there is no way of knowing anything about it. Even though the discourse names only a comparatively small set of characters, most fictional worlds can nonetheless produce millions or billions of per-sons whose existence can be inferred from reality; this is described by the theoretical concept which is called either Reality Principle or Pre-sumption of Verisimilitude21.

Calvino’s novel reflects on the completeness of its embedded nov-els. Genette acknowledges this fact when he suggests that the book could be taken for a modern compilation of ten novellas (cf. Genette 2004: 99). Although the embedded texts are utterly unfinished, they

demonstrate their extrinsic completeness. The Reader looks for a se-quel only as long as it seems available somewhere; every time he real-izes that the latest book is not the one he has been looking for, he is, in spite of his former intention, satisfied with the book he has just acquired. He thus acknowledges that each book ends where it ends. Seeming to be psychologically atypical, the Reader’s behavior – his satisfaction – exactly stresses our theoretical result; a Reader must realize that there is no continuation unless there is. Moreover, the em-bedded novels turn out to be astonishingly connected with one an- 21 This concept appears in such heterogeneous theoretical approaches as, for in-stance, Walton 1990, Lamarque/Olsen 1994, and Zipfel 2001.

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other; the sequence of all their titles gives a sentence which, in one of the novel’s last scenes, reminds another reader, called the “sixth reader”, of “a novel that begins like that”22 (Calvino 1980/1998: 258). While, to the Reader, each fragmentary novel is a starting-point for encountering new worlds, the concatenation of the titles indicates that existing fictional worlds can inspire the creation of new worlds with-out being affected themselves (cf. Kuhn 2004: 156). On the inner side of the frame of fictionality, the sudden breaking off does not have any consequence. Inside each fictional world, it does not matter to anyone that this world is part of a complex ‘outer’ plan. When novels end, one has, in a sense, done with them, because even an unfinished, frag-mentary novel is, with regard to the fictional world, complete. A fic-tional world can be explored by interpretation and even deemed in-comprehensible, yet it is there in all its solidity23.

In any world nothing can be inserted, modified, or taken away. This is true of the real world as much as of any fictional world. And every text is limited by the delimitation the medium of writing imposes. This is true of fictional texts as well as of factual ones. The difference, however, is that the same delimitation (that is the same framing) installs different limitations in both cases respectively. In the case of fiction the delimitation installs the frame of fictionality and defines a complete world; whereas in all other cases, there is no such frame even if the factual text is untruthful or false. In the latter cases, coherence demands correction; there is no world of its own, but an inappropriate description of the real world. Hence the idea of com-pleteness does not apply to factual stories.

How is this completeness of fictional worlds achieved? The fictio-nal world only exists as long as an observer can separate its constitu-tive rules from those he knows from the real world he observes. This is only possible when the observer has a privileged position, when he

22 “un romanzo che comincia così” (Calvino 1980/2003: 303).

23 See the contribution of Rubik to the present volume.

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is not part of the world he discerns as fictional. However, he has to adjust his claim of coherence to the requirements of what he finds in the fictional world. If, in a fictional word, a person called Dorian will not grow older, the question might be asked, what do other people

think of this? There would be no sense in denying the fact of Dorian’s eternal youth. An observer thus sets up a difference which separates an inner side, the fictional world, from an outer side. The realm in which an autonomous coherence claims its own reality is demarcated by delimiters which, however, cannot be observed within the fictional world24. When dealing with a fictional world, one knows that coher-ence must be achieved with respect to the rules of the autonomous world one has just encountered. At the same time it is important to make sure to which extent these rules are applicable. As the Reality Principle is permanently in effect, horses remain horses even if in a given text they are blue. If something differs from reality, there is no need to construct an utterly new world; in fact, this would be impos-sible (as the Reality Principle also explains). On the whole, in contrast

to what one would naïvely expect, coherence is why fictional worlds can be different from how one observes the real world. This difference provides the inner side with an indefiniteness of its own25, an indefiniteness which, paradoxically, makes the fictional world com-plete26.

24 This is true even if there is metafiction (for recent overviews see Wolf 2004 and Fludernik 2003). Characters may know (or rather believe) that their universe depends on a book that is being read; yet, they cannot see the book’s delimiters. Metafiction, in such cases, is restricted to the fictional world. A real-world human being may also believe that the universe will come to an end in some billion years; but he will not observe this incident.

25 With Luhmann 1997: 222 and Spencer-Brown 1969/1994: 5 (“unmarked state”), we could say that a fictional world provides an unmarked space within its frame. This would mean that, at any time, there are distinctions not yet made, a space about which nothing can be said until it is observed. We could conclude, then, that this is the reason why interpretation can always discover new things in a well-known text.

26 Completeness, however, does not mean that all questions must be finally answer-ed.

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In order to name the limits of a fictional world, I will now intro-duce a more abstract notion of the ‘end’ which refers to the borderline

between the real and a fictional world27. I will call it the ‘transcep-tional end’. We can define the ‘transceptional end’ as the frame of completeness sanctioned by the delimiters (i.e. by the end of support). While the dénouement and the close can be identified in the real world without taking any account of the frame of fictionality (after all, the real world is the place where the text and the discourse actually exist), the transceptional end is the effect the delimiters produce on the inner side of fictionality. From a character’s point of view, an awareness of the transceptional end is logically not possible from within a story. Within a fictional world, this fictional world is the real world and is, as such, singular; logically, there is no outer side28. More precisely, as an observer’s operations constitute the fictional world – and also the real world (cf. Esposito 1993: 97) – the observer discerns fictional observers who, as a result of coherence, cannot perceive the operations to which they owe their existence. Yet, an observer of a fictional world necessarily transgresses the border, i.e. passes from one side of the frame of fictionality to the other because, due to the Reality Principle, we have to use our knowledge of the real world to determine the properties of the fictional world. At the same time, in order to determine the extension of the rules which are in effect particularly for the respective fictional world, an ending must be presupposed in the fictional world. Otherwise, an observer would run the risk of getting into trouble deciding whether or not something is fictional. The ending thus always has a ‘transceptional’ effect since it

27 At a time where a specific use of ‘frame’ necessitated quotation marks, Barbara Herrnstein Smith observed that “one of the functions or effects of poetic form is to ‘frame’ the poetic utterance: to maintain its identity as distinct from that of ordinary discourse, to draw an enclosing line, in other words, that marks the boundary between ‘art’ and ‘reality’” (Smith 1968: 238). We prefer to speak of the boundary between text and non-text, on the one hand, and between the real and the fictional world, on the other, thereby leaving aside the quotation marks surrounding ‘art’ and ‘reality’.

28 The frame of fictionality outlines a ‘well-marked unmarked space’, see note 25.

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involves the necessity of (illegitimately29) crossing the line defined by the delimitation.

More generally, ‘transception’ designates the transgression of a border, a transgression, however, which at the same time marks the border and invokes its existence. It is not an absurdity to conceive that a borderline is defined by transgression. Indeed, this is an important way of demarcating a border; if no transgression is to be expected or feared, there is often no need for demarcation. If trespassing can be imagined, a border has just emerged. To define a border in such a

‘sloppy’ manner surely raises the risk of confusion (fiction is danger-ous), but at the same time one gains some advantages: it becomes possible to equip the fictional world with indefiniteness without giv-ing up completeness and coherence. Fiction permits the observation of an experimental world without endangering the order of reality.

Thus, I would like to approach fictionality in terms of transception, that is, with the means of a terminology that is not founded on a uni-directional scheme of causality30. As fictionality is a phenomenon that persistently refuses to divulge its indicators31, the delimiters cannot simply be taken for the framing associated with the frame of fictional-ity. The question is not how this fictionality is indicated, that is, what

29 There are obvious analogies between our concept of transception and the theory of metalepsis Genette has recently (cf. 2004) unfolded. Genette tries to show that, in a broader sense, metalepsis is to be found in any discourse, even in any use of the pro-noun I (cf. Genette 2004: 110). However, such a conception would overturn the term’s use in current research where a neat definition preponderates. Beyond their evident application, metalepses are very important to the functioning of Calvino’s novel, cf. Kuhn 2004: 133.

30 Transception is defined as the situation in which the mere possibility of trans-gression is constitutive of the border. So the border emerges after a transgression al-though a border must be assumed before a transgression. Of course, bidirectional causality does not mean symmetry: both processes are quite different and subject to analysis in this paper.

31 Zipfel (2001: 232-234) shows that a sheer enumeration of ‘indices of fictionality’ – to resume more or less Käte Hamburger’s term – is not satisfactory. There is no catalog of indicators which would not invite us to promptly give some counter-exam-ples, and no indicator ever proposed is exclusively reserved for the purpose of marking fictionality but can equally be found in factual discourses.

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the framing is that corresponds to the frame of fictionality, although it is obvious that the delimiters – among which explicit paratextual markers such as ‘novel’ play an important role – can be considered as the predominant framing device for the frame under consideration. Even if we agree that, in order to operate, one has to rely on the frame of fictionality which emerges due to these operations, we must assume an anchor or a key which spawns the process. Transception is a concept that helps us to deal with the circularity of the processes in-volved. Accordingly, fictionality itself is a transception because pre-supposing an outside (the real world) which is considered inaccessible from within is constitutive of a fictional world.

The transceptional phenomena I am discussing here are frames that define their framing from within. Even if, admittedly, many framings have become rather conventional (i.e. predictable) and in most cases consist of paratexts, it is this bidirectional scheme which produces the broad diversity of framings. Such a scheme challenges the notion of frame and framing since the framing no longer precedes the frame in the temporal dimension (first one recognizes the framing, then one uses the frame), but both constitute each other32. Speaking of a recip-rocal formation, however, gives an explanation for one familiar, but still important insight into the nature of fiction: only limited informa-tion can induce unlimited interpretation.

Despite Abdullah’s disappointment within the fictional world, the

last lines, seen from a real-world point of view, are notably different from the lines in the middle of a text; their excess of meaning orig-inates from their implicit presumption of finality, which reaches be-yond the fictional world and hence infringes on the rules of fiction, at the same time complying with them. Every fictional story has a close which, though being determined from outside the text, has an impact on the inside of the text. All these results are as paradoxical as the correlation between completeness and virtual infinity. We could say 32 For the related problem of how to deal with contingent and emergent frames see the paper by Dembeck in the present volume.

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that transgressions of the boundary are characteristic of this particular

type of frame33. In the narrated world nobody can show that soon nothing more will happen. Even if there is metafiction, even if some characters know that the discourse they depend on is limited, the nar-rated world does not collapse, nor can the characters ‘act out’ or ex-perience that the information about them comes to an end.

Whereas the concepts derived from the analysis of a linear medium such as narrative fiction obviously hold for other linear media (such as film) as well, non-linear media behave differently. The most interesting counterpart in art is painting. As a picture usually lacks a linear underlying structure that constitutes the support within the me-dium, it cannot have a close. Hence a dénouement is not possible since the solution of conflicts cannot be located in the close. But delimita-tion is provided by the material frame or the painting’s edge which can be considered a framing border in the terminology used here (see the “Introduction”). Again, the framing is what allows me to speak of a transceptional end. A picture is complete. As no information can intrude into the world created by the painting, the framing contributes to the status of fictionality. (A real-world photographic picture is apparently different34.)

The most interesting cases in painting, too, are those which delib-erately expose their transceptional qualities. David Hockney’s A Visit

with Christopher and Don (1984) shows the interior of a house and the surroundings; the house itself looks more or less like a doll’s house since we can look into several rooms and see the beach through the windows as well as actually outside, all of this at the same time. The observer sees some of the surroundings from his own point of view, but simultaneously, the window frames show the view someone 33 Goffman (1974/2003: passim) points out that frames are always exposed to in-fringement.

34 One can always say that, when the picture was being taken, something more im-portant happened outside the frame; the photographer just did not take notice of what was actually going on, or he tried to conceal the truth by choosing an inadequate frame.

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would have from inside the house. This evident reference to Cubist ideas is transceptional in itself because the views one has from inside and from outside are merged into one ‘panorama’. What we can see through the windows is what we can see from outside the house. The transgression of borders is not directly indicated. The frames are win-dows but their framings emerge due to contextual information; for example, a thick yellow line which is painted directly above the living room can only be recognized as a road because it leads to a car port; the red sofa is in the apartment and not outside the house only because we know that sofas are usually inside. What is most important, we could not recognize the frames as windows, if something else were depicted ‘in’ them; they need not have a framing because they repli-cate the frame. As the observer has a privileged position, he can over-look the scene, and for him there is an outside that is inaccessible from the inside. The different depictions of the same view (which look onto the beach) must either be windows, photographs or paintings. What I have said about the completeness of narratives is thus also true of paintings. The picture says that this is all it can show, this is all that can be known about the depicted world; this picture is complete because nothing more is visible on the canvas. Even though the ex-pression ‘ending’ seems little satisfactory with regard to a non-linear medium, this basic limitation is the transceptional ‘end’.

However, if one conceives transceptional ends in such a general way, I have to explain why I insist on the term ‘end’; why should ‘be-ginning’ not have been an equally appropriate term? Why is the ending so important if one wants to gain possession of a text? In ending, the author renders the text to the public and gives up control over it35. It is possible to publish a text without thematic closure, and

35 Seen from the recipient’s point of view this corresponds to the following: “con-sumers of commercially presented, vicarious experience will need to be sure that the ceasing of transmission marks the point when it is possible and proper to assess the full meaning of the drama that has been unfolding and not simply a point at which technical difficulties occurred.” (Goffman 1974/2003: 256)

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has often been done. In any case the author indicates that his voice will now cease to speak and, in doing so, refers to his own name36. It is no accident that Calvino’s novel, which is so much aware of the complexity of endings, finishes with the author’s name. “Italo Calvino” are its very last words. At first glance this effect, which might be called the author’s ‘inquit’, does not have anything to do with the linear order associated with the text, in particular nothing to do with the different types of ‘ends’. It is, however, the author’s seal. It is not the paratextual occurrence of the author’s name but the direct-ive requesting that this text never again be subject to modification. It is thus a symbolic and implicit act that is accomplished upon publica-tion (even though the author’s explicit decision or death must precede it) and therefore at the very end37. It produces all the transceptional effects inside and outside the story as well as inside and outside the discourse in so far as the end signals completeness, virtual infinity, and fictionality. The author finally leaves his mark on the narrative by conveying, if he simply breaks off, the message, ‘this is all I was able to say’, or, if he finishes his work, the message, ‘this is all I was will-ing to say’38.

This is all I am willing to say.

36 “Wo aus der Signatur ein Autor wird, dessen Name in der buchförmigen Text-gestalt, vom ‘Referenztext’ etwas abgesetzt, an die Überschrift heranrückt, wird nicht mehr wie bei der Unterschrift das Vorangegangene als abgeschlossen überschaut, be-siegelt und anerkannt, sondern der nachstehende Text der Lektüre freigegeben. Der Leser muß ihn nun an sich nehmen. Überdies muß der Autor den Ort seiner Nennung mit dem Titel teilen.” (Binczek 2004: 131)

37 This is not a proposition concerning the temporal dimension (first the author writes a text, then it is published), but this is a phenomenon strictly bound to the medium through which a text (or a painting) is transmitted.

38 The second case is the case of the fragmentary text. This marginal difference only becomes noticeable in the paratext.

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— (1987/2002). Seuils. Paris: Seuil. — (1990). Fiction et diction. Paris: Seuil. — (2004). Métalepse: De la figure à la fiction. Paris: Seuil. Goffman, Erving (1974/2003). Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Or-

ganization of Experience. Boston, MA: Northeastern Univ. Press. Hamon, Philippe (1975). “Clausules”. Poétique 24: 495-526. Kermode, Frank (1966/2000). The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the

Theory of Fiction. With a New Epilogue. Oxford: OUP. Korte, Barbara (1985). Techniken der Schlußgebung im Roman: Eine

Untersuchung englisch- und deutschsprachiger Romane. Frankfurt am Main: Lang.

Kotin Mortimer, Armine (1985): La Clôture narrative. Paris: José Corti.

Kuhn, Barbara (2004). “Vom Anfang und Ende des Erzählens: Calvi-nos Antwort auf Boccaccio”. Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 241: 128-156.

Kunz, Marco (1997). El final de la novela: Teoría, técnica y análisis del cierre en la literatura moderna en lengua española. Madrid: Gredos.

Lamarque, Peter, Stein Haugom Olsen (1994). Truth, Fiction, and Literature: A Philosophical Perspective. Oxford et al.: Clarendon Press.


— (1995). Le Mot de la fin: La clôture romanesque en question. Paris: Nathan.

Lotman, Jurij M. (1970/1973). Die Struktur des künstlerischen Textes. Trans. R. Grübel, W. Kroll, H.-E. Seidel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhr-kamp.

Luhmann, Niklas (1986/2001). “Das Medium der Kunst”. Niklas Luh-mann. Aufsätze und Reden. Stuttgart: Reclam. 198-217.

— (1995). Die Kunst der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. — (1997). Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main:

Suhrkamp. Miller, D. A. (1981). Narrative and its Discontents: Problems of Clo-

sure in the Traditional Novel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. Nutt-Kofoth, Rüdiger (2004). “Text lesen – Text sehen: Edition und

Typographie”. Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift 78: 3-19.

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Prince, Gerald (1982). Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative. Berlin: Mouton.

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Framing in Film


Initial Framings in Film*

Roy Sommer

Although the concept of cognitive schemata as proposed by Erving Goffman and others has had some resonance within media studies, it has not been applied sys-tematically to film analysis so far. Using a broad variety of examples from Hitch-cock to Spielberg, this essay attempts a systematic overview of framing strategies used in films. It distinguishes between contextual framing (expectations raised be-fore the actual visit to the cinema by marketing campaigns, names of leading ac-tors and directors or the title of a movie etc.) and textual framing (the visual, audi-tive and narrative signals employed to define the genre and to get the audience in the right mood for the story). The wide range of openings discussed below include such diverse productions as Goldfinger, Trainspotting, Don Juan DeMarco, The Matrix and The Big Lebowski. Using Derek Jarman’s Blue and Spike Jonze’s Adaptation as examples, the final section also discusses frame-breaking strategies, meaning the conscious violation of conventional rules.

1. Introduction

The most memorable scenes of a movie are usually not found in the beginning, since for dramaturgical reasons the most surprising twists or most emotional moments are generally saved for the final se-quences. There are exceptions, of course, such as the opening se-quence in Steven Spielberg’s war drama Saving Private Ryan (1998)1. The shocking, 23-minute-long depiction of carnage during the attack on German emplacements at Omaha Beach earned the movie an

* Original contribution to this volume; not read at the conference ‘Framing in Literature and Other Media’.

1 A WWII veteran’s (Harrison Young as the old Private Ryan) return to the battle-field is captured in a series of rather conventional, but nevertheless very effective images: the American flag, thousands of identical graves and a close-up of Ryan’s face, showing the tears in his eyes. This silent recollection (the first four minutes of the movie) is followed by a flashback to hell – the American invasion of France on June 6, 1944.

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R-rating for intense, prolonged and realistically graphic sequences of war violence and made a lasting impression on most viewers.

Despite the fact that we usually remember the main plot points and endings rather than beginnings, however, it is the title sequence which needs to capture the audience by establishing the genre, mood and setting of a movie and introducing the film’s protagonist(s) and main theme, thus ‘framing’ the story. This textual frame is not a static one, as the implicit reference to a painting’s frame may imply, but refers to the cognitive concept of frames and framing as outlined in Werner Wolf’s introduction to this volume2. In this sense, the term ‘framing’, as applied to film, neither denotes a single image (as in technical film analysis) nor a frame narrative as in James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) but a combination of auditive and visual signals and narrative strate-gies. These interact dynamically with the audience’s knowledge and expectations:

Generally, the spectator comes to the film already tuned, prepared to focus ener-gies toward story construction and to apply sets of schemata derived from context and prior experience. (Bordwell 1985: 34).

The first part of this essay is concerned with this contextual ‘tuning’ which can be classified as extra-compositional framing: what kind of expectations do viewers hold, and how are these expectations raised? The second part takes a closer look at textual ‘framings’ in film, con-centrating on initial framings for the reasons mentioned above3. If we agree with Frow that “[e]very aesthetic object or process has a frame or frames peculiar to it” (2002: 333), the specific nature of the cinema as an audio-visual narrative medium has to be considered. What, then, are the specific contextual and textual frames peculiar to film?

As with all interpretations which are mainly interested in the pos-sible effects or functions of specific textual features or narrative strategies, this kind of semiotic film analysis has to accept two major

2 See also Tannen 1993a.

3 In accordance with Wolf’s introductory definition, framing here refers to “codings of cognitive frames” (10).

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limitations. The first is due to the fact that the interpretation of effects or functions requires the working fiction of a model recipient: he or she is supposed to have an average knowledge of, and interest in, film, to have typical viewing habits and to see the movie close to the time of its original release4. As we cannot attempt an empirical analysis of the actual cognitive processes triggered by certain framings, the second limitation is the concentration on the (con)text as the framing agency5, whereas recipient-based or sender-based framing activities have to be neglected.

2. Shaping Expectations: Contextual Frames

The typical moviegoer arrives at the cinema with a pretty clear set of

expectations not only about the kind of film he or she is going to see

but also about the kind of experience he or she is hoping to have6. Possible experiences range from dating, when the film serves as a pretext to be alone with someone in the intimate ambience of the cin-ema (regardless of the kind of film, although genres such as the ro-mantic comedy may be preferred for obvious reasons), to having a good laugh with a couple of friends or enjoying a scary encounter with the latest horror film (cinema as entertainment). Visits to the cinema may also be embedded in the hype surrounding the release of blockbusters such as a new Star Wars movie, which is a special event for dedicated fan communities and underlines the cinema’s prominent

4 See also the beginning of the third section below.

5 For a typology of framings which includes the criterion of the framing agency see Wolf’s introduction to this volume.

6 The relevance of what might be considered as ‘social’ framing results from cin-ema’s role as a social activity which distinguishes it from other kinds of media usage. In the age of home entertainment, characterised by a convergence of media (computer, TV, DVD) and ever more affordable technology (including projectors and wide-screen displays as well as the arrival of surround sound to emulate the cinematic experience), entertainment increasingly takes place in the private sphere. The cinema as a public space, however, requires a conscious decision: it won’t come to your house, you have to go there.

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function within popular culture as a generator of new myths and cul-tural narratives.

Apart from these external expectations that result from the cin-ema’s role as a social activity, the expectations about the kind of film one is going to see are defined by two types of contextual framing which are based on the film itself and on the viewers’ prior experience with the cinema7: the specific “narrative image” (Ellis 1981: 30) conveyed by a film on the one hand, and the knowledge of generic conventions on the other. Ellis’ notion of a film’s “narrative image” has recently been taken up by Neale (2000: 160):

The discourses of film-industry publicity and marketing play a key role in the construction of such narrative images; but important too are other institutionalized public discourses, especially those of the press and television, and the ‘unofficial’, ‘word of mouth’ discourses of everyday life8.

The definition and discursive circulation of narrative images for spe-cific films takes place in a wide variety of text-types and media. These include reviews in newspapers as well as in dedicated journals, background information and additional material published on web-sites, and marketing material such as film posters and trailers, both on TV and in the cinema itself. This contextual framing normally focuses on a limited number of ‘unique selling points’. First among these are names – the names of the actors and the director, whose previous work and image influence the audience’s expectations. Of course, nominations and awards play an important role in the making of an 7 Contextual framing continues after the original screening of a movie. It may receive cult status, such as the Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), which is still screened in independent cinemas today; it may spark one or more sequels; or it may, as is the case with Schindler’s List (1993), help to raise public awareness (as well as funds) in order to promote its political or ideological message. Spielberg’s Shoah foundation, established in 1994, certainly adds a new dimension to the contextual framing of Schindler’s List, which is increasingly used for didactic purposes in schools.

8 A film may, of course, be already situated within a larger frame that pre-defines its narrative and ideological image. This is especially true of historical movies dealing with highly controversial and emotional issues such as World War II or the Holo-caust: Wolfgang Petersen’s Das Boot (1981) or Stephen Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) are prominent examples.


actor, director or screenwriter, as do box-office successes and the tabloid press. Thus, the British actor Hugh Grant is inextricably linked with the new type of highly successful British romantic comedies emerging in the 1990s: Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Notting

Hill (1999), Bridget Jones’s Diary (1998) and Love Actually (2002). For those film fans who regularly read the credits, Richard Curtis (who also directed Love Actually) is as prominent a member of the team as Hugh Grant: Curtis not only wrote or co-wrote the scripts of the four movies mentioned above, but is also the writer behind Rowan Atkinson aka Mr Bean, and thus a household name in contemporary comedy.

The second unique selling point is a film’s visual image: the visual framing, which will be discussed below, frequently starts long before the first images are shown on the screen, as it includes the design of the film posters and merchandising products. Memorable poster designs include the U. S. and German posters of Fargo (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1996): here, the official tagline (“a homespun murder story”) is taken up by the ‘home-made’, quasi-embroidered design of the poster. The importance of the visual identity is emphasized by Richard Curtis in his afterword to the published screenplay of Love

Actually:

Designing the poster is one of the most delightful and frustrating parts of making a movie. In the back of your mind is the dream scenario where you come up with something like the perfect ones – The Godfather, Jaws, The Graduate. (2003: 218)

As the collection of early posters for Love Actually printed in the af-terword to the published screenplay (see Curtis 2003) shows, the creation of the ‘perfect’ visual representation of the film’s intended message is not merely (or rather: not mainly) an aesthetic decision but a search for the ‘perfect’ corporate identity for the marketing cam-paign.

A third unique selling point that contributes to the narrative image of a film is the tag line or log line, which can be found on film posters. Famous examples are “On Friday June 17, man’s deepest fear will rise

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again” (Jaws: The Revenge, Steven Spielberg, 1987), “The world will never be the same once you’ve seen it through the eyes of Forrest Gump” (Forrest Gump, Robert Zemeckis, 1994), “Collide with destiny” (Titanic, James Cameron, 1997), “Every generation has a legend. Every journey has a first step. Every saga has a beginning” (Star Wars: Episode I, George Lucas, 1999), “Be afraid of the future” (The Matrix, Andy and Larry Wachowski, 1999), “No mercy, no shame, no sequel” (Scary Movie, Keenen Ivory Wayans, 2000), and “They’re already here” (War of the Worlds, Steven Spielberg, 2005). Such verbal, often hyperbolic descriptions contribute to the “inter-textual relay”, a term which Neale borrows from Lukow/Ricci (see 1984), in order to emphasize the close link between narrative images and genres:

This relay performs an additional, generic function: not only does it define and circulate narrative images for individual films, beginning the immediate process of expectation and anticipation; it also helps to define and circulate, in combina-tion with the films themselves, what one might call ‘generic images’, providing sets of labels, terms, and expectations that will come to characterize the genre as a whole. (Neale 2000: 160)

As Neale’s discussion of the role of genres in the creation and circula-tion of narrative images shows, the heuristic distinction between con-textual and textual framings becomes increasingly difficult to main-tain. On the one hand, contextual aspects such as posters, trailers and big names clearly indicate certain genres, and one might even argue that film genres are contextual rather than textual phenomena and describe cognitive concepts rather than a corpus of works:

Genres do not consist only of films: they consist also, and equally, of specific sys-tems of expectation and hypothesis that spectators bring with them to the cinema and that interact with films themselves during the course of the viewing process. (Neale 2000: 158)

On the other hand, textual framing, that is, generic cues, first have to establish the transtextual patterns on which these expectations and hypotheses are based9.

9 Of course, genres can also be retrospective constructs referring to specific aes-thetic or narrative traditions after they have been established by a number of individ-


It has to be said, however, that the fact that contextual and textual framing strategies inside and outside the cinema interact seamlessly poses hardly any practical problems for the semantic analysis of fram-ing: while the beginning, the scope and the forms of framing activities may be open to debate, they always present a semantic continuum. This hardly comes as a surprise, as the narrative image of the movie is, after all, consciously created and deliberately designed by the makers and producers. How contextual and textual framings may interact to form a coherent semantic continuum is demonstrated by the example of Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996), one of the most successful British films in recent years.

The marketing campaign used the distinctive ‘choose life’ voice-over spoken by protagonist Renton (Ewan McGregor) at the beginning and ending of the movie10. The complete monologue was reprinted on the official posters, functioning as an extended tag line and thus complementing the “distinctive visual aesthetic” (Lury 2000: 106) and extensive marketing of the movie. Whether this justifies Lury’s criticism that Trainspotting became a brand itself rather than offering a critical commentary on the commodification of contemporary popular culture is open to debate. Without doubt, however, the hype surrounding Irvine Welsh’s original novel, the theatre adaptation, the film and the merchandising (posters, T-shirts, CDs, videos) offers a particularly complex example of contextual framing for a low-budget production.

ual works: “While some genres represent established categories of studio production (Western, musicals) recognized by both producers and consumers, others were ex post facto designations constructed by critics. No producer in the 1940s set out to make a ‘film noir’. The term itself was coined retrospectively by French film critics on the analogy of the serie noire.” (Stam 2000: 150)

10 See footnote 16.

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3. From Leather Gloves to Bullet Time:

Textual Frames

While the analysis of contextual framing includes critical discourses and marketing campaigns, studies of the relationship between textual signals and their naturalisation by a film’s audience emphasize the reception process. Before we look at specific examples of textual framing, this focus on the audience has to be made a bit more precise. In his introductory essay, Miller (cf. 2000) distinguishes between two main approaches which he terms audience research and spectatorship theory respectively. While audience research refers to sociological approaches, Miller’s definition of spectatorship theory subsumes those approaches that are based on psychological models11. This exclusive concentration on psychoanalytical approaches to cinema audiences, however, excludes the current theories based on the cognitive turn in literary and media studies which have overcome the limitations inherent in psychoanalysis. These new approaches are not interested in the spectator “as a narratively inscribed concept” (Miller 2000: 337) but in the naturalisation of textual (cinematic) signals.

The specific nature of the viewer’s activity, especially the role of subconscious inferences based on scripts and schemata, in making sense of moving images has been a major concern of cognitive and narratological film studies since the pioneering work of Bordwell (1985), which introduced schema theory to film studies. Bordwell’s approach is based on the assumption, still valid today, that in the comprehension of the visual and acoustic data supplied by a film, bottom-up perceptual processes and top-down cognitive activities involving expectations constantly interact. As film is a temporal art

11 “Spectatorship theory is […] concerned with speculation about the effects on people of films, but instead of questioning, testing, and measuring them, it uses psychoanalysis to explore how supposedly universal internal struggles over the formation of subjectivity are enacted on-screen and in the psyches of watchers. The spectator is understood as a narratively inscribed concept that can be known via a combination of textual analysis and Freudianism.” (Miller 2000: 337)


form and as the specific viewing conditions in the cinema, unlike TV or DVD home entertainment, entail a chronological, uninterrupted viewing from the beginning to the ending, Bordwell is especially in-

terested in the process of narrative comprehension. In his discussion of the procedural schemata applied by the viewers, Bordwell therefore distinguishes four rules or ‘motivations’ for naturalising textual ele-ments: audio-visual information may be motivated by its relevance to story necessity (compositional motivation), by its plausibility (realistic motivation), by generic conventions (transtextual motivation) or by purely aesthetic reasons (artistic motivation) (cf. 1985: 36).

Bordwell’s approach has been criticised by Staiger, who points out that he “explicitly constructs a competent viewer as his spectator”, that he “excludes affect, not because it is not pertinent, but because he is delimiting his field of research”, and that he “also eliminates historical and cultural differences in viewers” (1992: 65). These criticisms may be (and have been) directed against all kinds of studies making use of cognitive models without conducting empirical research to test their hypotheses. Such a lack of empirical evidence, however, does not strike me as a serious shortcoming – especially when we talk about the reception of relatively recent films within our own society: as we can rely on our own world-knowledge and cultural awareness to offer plausible interpretations of visual, acoustic and narrative framings in films, the working fiction of the competent, historically and culturally sensitive model recipient seems not to be too far-fetched. What, then, are the most relevant textual signals (visual, auditive and narrative) which activate our comprehension capabilities? Which initial framing strategies are used in order to initiate a certain type of reader response?

The first textual element spectators encounter (long before the ac-tual visit to the cinema) is, of course, the film’s title. Some titles, such as Titanic (James Cameron, 1997), Scream (Wes Craven, 1996) or Goldmember (Mike Myers, 2002) clearly indicate the kind of movie we are going to encounter: a historical drama based on actual events, a

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horror movie (with a title anticipating its intended effect on the au-dience), and a parody of Goldfinger (1964), the third in the series of James Bond movies. Paris, Texas (1984), a road movie written by playwright Sam Shepard and directed by Wim Wenders, makes effec-tive uses of the diverging connotations of the French capital as the city of love, style and fashion on the one hand and Texas as a synonym of Western, dust and desert on the other. The sense of longing conveyed by these irreconcilable names and concepts is underlined by Ry Cooder’s melancholic slide guitar music in the opening scene in which a lonely man (Harry Dean Stanton as Travis) walks through the desert before arriving at a bar in the middle of nowhere. Another example of effective textual framing is the English title of Sergio Leone’s Western C’era una volta il West (1968): Once Upon a Time in the

West combines the classic beginning of the fairy tale with a reference to the genre of the Western, anticipating the epic story of the mysterious stranger with the harmonica (Charles Bronson) who helps to save a beautiful widow from the assassin hired by the ruthless manager of the railroad company.

In the cinema, the variety of framing strategies used in the opening or title sequence testifies to the flexibility of the medium. Both the design of, and the information conveyed by, the titles and credits themselves make a significant contribution to the framing process. For instance, paratextual devices such as the use of distinctive fonts in the title sequence of Star Wars: Episode III (George Lucas, 2005) create continuity between this episode and the other movies in the saga. Similarly, the information that a film is based on a novel or on a his-torical event may activate a ‘literary’ or ‘historiographical’ frame: the audience, or rather that part of the audience who are familiar with the original text or the historical background, will critically compare novel and adaptation or judge the truth value, historical accuracy and ideological stance of the movie. This is especially relevant in politi-cally sensitive films dealing with the Holocaust such as Roberto Be-nigni’s La vita è bella (1997).


Further aspects of framing include the choice and use of images and colours, music and sound effects, costumes, objects and setting, camera angles, movements and perspectives (ranging from extreme close-ups to extreme long shots), lighting and special effects. These can, of course, interact in various combinations. In Jeremy Leven’s Don Juan DeMarco (1995), the first image is a close-up of a book, The Original Tale of Don Juan. The camera then focuses on the hands of the young protagonist (Johnny Depp), who slowly puts on a cuff link and signet ring, followed by equally old-fashioned, long leather gloves and a mask, thus transforming himself into a romantic hybrid of Zorro and the Don Juan of Lord Byron’s poem. This costume – completely out of place in the present-day New York, in which the movie is set – as well as the visual reference to the fictional account of the adventures of Don Juan indicate the movie’s main theme: the gap between romance and reality and the romantic escape from reality.

Memorable title sequences can, of course, also frequently be found in a less romantic genre: the horror movie or suspense thriller. An early example of effective initial framing is Alfred Hitchcock’s Ver-

tigo (1958), widely admired for its innovative use of camera angles and perspectives. The extreme close-ups of a partially hidden woman’s face in the title sequence (accompanied by Bernard Herr-mann’s dissonant orchestral score) anticipate the thriller’s psycho-logical theme – the fatal consequences of a voyeuristic obsession with idealized images of women12. Equally effective is the camera work in

12 Vertigo’s title sequence is described in detail by Tim Dirks (www.filmsite.org): “The film begins with a fragmented and shifting image of a woman’s blank and ex-pressionless face; first, an enormous close-up of the lower left portion of her face, then her lips, then her frightened eyes darting left and then right, and then a straight-on close-up of her right eye as the entire screen takes on a bright reddish hue. The title of the film ‘Vertigo’ zooms out slowly from the depths of her widening pupil. Spiralling, vertiginous, animated designs (of various configurations and shapes) replace the close-up of the iris, and the remainder of the credits plays over a black background after the pupil is entered and the eye fades away. The background returns to the eye (still reddish) and the final credit emerges from its center: ‘Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.’”

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the opening scene in Jaws (1974), Steven Spielberg’s first box-office success. The film opens with a series of underwater shots, anticipating the (invisible) shark’s perspective, before a beach party is shown. As in Vertigo, menacing music – here it is the repetitive ‘shark theme’ composed by John Williams – and the subjective camera perspective (from the shark’s point of view) help to create, sustain and increase suspense. A girl leaves the party to go swimming. In a low-angle shot from underwater, the camera makes the audience witness the shark’s attack on the helpless teenager.

The same effect of creating suspense by the combination of camera work and music – albeit in a completely different manner – is achieved in the title sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s classic The Shining

(1980). Here, (aerial) photography and extreme long shots create a contrast between the magnificent scenery of the Rocky Mountains in early winter and a lonely car driving towards a remote hotel where the protagonist will apply for an off-season job as a caretaker. The tension between the breathtaking scenery and the disturbing, synthesized music (unlike the ‘shark theme’ in Jaws, it is not motivated by immi-nent danger) gives away that this is the beginning of a horror movie13. This is supported by the careful use of sound effects in the title se-quence: in his review, Tim Dirks mentions that “on the soundtrack, one can faintly detect the sound of a boy’s tricycle going over the rug-covered hardwood floor of a hotel – a foreshadowing of what’s to come” (www.filmsite.org)14.

13 Particularly interesting is the soundtrack of Once Upon a Time in the West (com-posed by Ennio Morricone), which ascribes a specific leitmotif to each of the main characters and has therefore been called a ‘horse opera’ (Faulstich 2002: 1999). As this essay concentrates on initial framing, however, such complex interactions of narrative, characterisation and music cannot be analyzed.

14 Despite the fact that sound effects are often registered only subconsciously, Chion emphasizes their vital role: “Sound shows us the image differently than what the image shows alone, and the image likewise makes us hear sound differently than if the sound were ringing out in the dark.” (2000: 122) While spoken words, the most important kind of sound in the “voco- and verbocentric” (ibid.: 113) medium of film,


Films which try to represent alternative fictional worlds often try to establish a ‘look’ of their own, such as the Mad Max trilogy or Kevin Costner’s Waterworld (1995), which uses innovative lighting effects in order to create a ‘realistic’ outdoor scenario15. This was also the case with Andy and Larry Wachowski’s film The Matrix (1999), the first movie of the Matrix trilogy which was completed by the releases of The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and Revolutions (2004). Praised by critics for its “hip look” (Aubrey 2001: 23) partly due to “those amaz-ing clothes worn by Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Ann Moss” (Bucknell 2002: 81), The Matrix “offers a dark vision of a not-so-distant future dystopia, reinforced in the early scenes by a rainy, noir cityscape that recalls Blade Runner” (Aubrey 2001: 23). The opening scenes show a police raid on a deserted building where a female hacker is working on a computer. When the officers attack her, it becomes clear very quickly that this seemingly realistic action movie is really science fiction: the woman successfully manages to dodge the bullets fired at her, defies gravity by running along the walls of the building and fi-nally, having killed her attackers, dissolves her body by answering a phone call in a public phone booth. This opening scene is also an example of framing by a special effect known as ‘bullet time’, which was invented for The Matrix and has since become one of its hall-marks:

It is a combination of slow motion and the rotation of the camera 360 degrees so that the viewer sees the bullets as they leave trails of severed air while Neo [or another character] dodges them, bent backwards at an impossible angle, 90 de-grees from the knees. (Bucknell 2002: 81)

The Matrix trilogy shows how visual framing helps to create not only

a transtextual, but also a transmedial corporate identity for the movie

structure vision “by rigorously framing it” (ibid.), other sounds, such as music and noise, may influence the perception of movement, speed and time (cf. ibid.: 113ff.).

15 See Taylor/Willis (1999: 16): “Since Waterworld is a film based almost entirely outdoors, the viewer is encouraged to read the film’s lighting as a natural phenome-non, with the sun and sky seeming to light much of the film’s action. Yet even while the effect strived for is naturalism, it is no less a constructed effect than a film which uses coloured filters or strobe lighting.”

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trilogy, the related cartoon books as well as the computer game “Enter the Matrix”, the Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) “The Matrix Online” and, of course, the ubiquitous Matrix screensaver. This cross-marketing of movies and games on the basis of shared visuals and narrative patterns not only opens up new areas for further research into transmedial storytelling, but has also been subject to ironic criticism: “One could be forgiven for erroneously thinking that the whole film is an ad for hand guns…” (ibid).

One of the most sophisticated examples of traditional transtextual patterns which create a strong family resemblance between individual movies and help to form a distinctive (sub)genre has to be the series of James Bond movies. Based on the novels by Ian Fleming, these films quickly developed a highly idiosyncratic, instantly recognizable ‘signature’, creating a highly complex, yet imminently accessible film language that has attracted not only generations of Bond fans but also critics from Kingsley Amis to Umberto Eco. The semiotic system of the Bond movies is not only characterized by recurring plot patterns and the seductive character of the protagonist, James Bond, who has become an icon of popular culture. It also has established a very spe-cific way of initial framings which are typical of the Bond narrative: in a similar way to the economic use of description and information in the novels, termed the ‘Fleming effect’ by Amis, the films make ex-tensive use of framing strategies.

Bennett’s and Woollacott’s analysis of the beginning of Goldfinger

(1964), which draws on the conventions established by Dr. No (1962), distinguishes three key sequences (cf. 1987: 148ff.). After the United Artists logo is shown, the ‘James Bond sequence’ introduces the movie, showing the double 00, one of which turns into a camera lens through which James Bond can be seen. Accompanied by the James Bond theme, he aims and shoots at the camera. The screen turns red. This is followed by the ‘pre-credits sequence’ which functions as the exposition: a harbour at night. A diver (James Bond) emerges from the water, wearing a plastic seagull on his head as a disguise. He enters a


guarded industrial compound, overpowers a guard, deposits a bomb in a drug factory and escapes from the building unseen. He then unzips his diving suit to reveal a white dinner jacket and enters a bar. Shortly after, the explosion can be heard. While the other guests leave the bar in panic, Bond has a short encounter with another agent who warns him that he is being followed. In another series of shots, Bond meets a woman in a hotel room who he discovers is a traitor when he is attacked by an intruder. Bond kills the assassin and leaves the girl behind, not before delivering one of those typical James Bond lines: “Shocking … Positively shocking”. This is where the theme song of Goldfinger sets in, introducing the titles sequence.

The analysis of the initial framing in Goldfinger reveals a template for the openings of the majority of the James Bond movies. Typical ingredients are firstly the visual gags, from the seagull disguise to the immaculate suit under the diving suit, secondly the ironic one-liners (“Shocking… Positively shocking”), thirdly, of course, the auditive cues (James Bond theme followed by the individual film’s theme). A fourth recurring aspect in the initial frames of James Bond movies are the Bond girls:

Almost all the Bond films have used a titles sequence in which the posed figures of scantily clad or naked women play the central part. The sequence is shot in time to the title song. (Bennett/Woollacott 1987: 152)

This function of erotic images of women, “totally fetishised, irrele-vant, in the most obvious way to the narrative” (ibid.: 153), have be-come the hallmark of James Bond movies. They are so recognizable that they have been subject to parody in Goldmember (Mike Myers, 2002).

Apart from the use of colour, images, music, costumes, objects, lighting and photography we have been concentrating on so far, spe-cific forms of narrative mediation, especially the voice-over, also add significantly to the effects of initial sequences. Despite the fact that Hollywood’s normative schools of screenwriting traditionally prefer ‘showing’ to ‘telling’ and thus regard voice-over narration as inferior

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to action16, initial voice-overs have gradually become a rather widely used framing strategy. Well-known examples include literary adapta-tions such as A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1967) or Train-

spotting (Danny Boyle, 1996). In these movies, the protagonists’ voice-overs serve as an effective means of characterisation, mediation of the backstory and exposition: in A Clockwork Orange, Alex’s opening monologue introduces the audience to the highly artificial language of the main characters, the unfamiliar setting and to the film’s main theme of violence17. During the chase which dominates the title sequence of Trainspotting, shoplifter and drug addict Renton, trying to escape the police, vents his anger in a now famous voice-over adapted from Irvine Welsh’s novel18.

Whereas in these movies the initial voice-overs spoken by the on-screen protagonists help to introduce the characters and the setting, the

16 The most prominent opponent of extended voice-over narration is Robert McKee, who, after briefly acknowledging the effectiveness of the occasional use of voice-over as a counterpoint narrative, condemns the continuing trend towards voice-over expo-sition: “‘Show, don’t tell’ means respect the intelligence and sensitivity of your audi-ence. […] Do not put them on your knee as if they were children and ‘explain’ life, for the misuse and overuse of narration is not only slack, it’s patronizing. And if the trend toward it continues, cinema will degrade into adulterated novels, and our art will shrivel.” (McKee 1997: 345)

17 “There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.”

18 “Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family, Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose a three piece suit on hire purchased in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing f--king junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose a future. Choose life...But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the rea-sons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?”


voice-over in the title sequence of The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen, 1998) is part of a more complex framing strategy which underlines the movie’s ironic stance towards American national identity and politics. An off-screen narrator (credited as “The Stranger”), who only appears as a minor character later on in the film and functions as an extradiegetic commentator on the fictional world of the movie, introduces the audience to the protagonist, an ageing hippy known as the ‘Dude’:

Out west there was this fella, fella I wanna tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski – at least that’s the handle his parents gave him. But he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that’s a name no one would self-apply where I come from. There was a lot about the Dude that didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, and a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again maybe that’s why I found the place so darn interesting. They call Los Angeles the City of Angels.

The deep voice of the narrator and the reference to the west instantly recall the Western genre, an effect which is enhanced by the image of the actor chosen for the part of The Stranger: Sam Elliot, whose film debut was in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), who starred in TV Westerns such as The Sacketts (1979) or The Shadow Riders

(1982) and who represents the archetypal American cowboy. This ‘Western’ framing is further emphasized both by the opening song (“Tumbling tumbleweeds” by country band Sons of the Pioneers) and the camera movement: at the beginning of the opening scene, the camera slowly approaches L. A. at sunset. The low shot, focussing on the ground, implies the perspective of a cowboy looking down from his horse.

Of course, The Big Lebowski is not a Western but a hybrid blend of comedy, crime and buddy movie which uses the generic reference as an ironic device. On the one hand, the Dude’s story as introduced by The Stranger (“Out west there was this fella…”) appears to be an archetypal quest for an alternative ‘male’ identity, albeit a very differ-ent one from that usually embodied by cowboys on the screen. On the other hand, the cowboy framing turns into an ironic critique of the American approach to foreign politics when, towards the end of his

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initial monologue, The Stranger explicitly links the Dude’s story to the war against Iraq: “Now, this story I’m about to unfold took place back in the early nineties, [at this point the opening scene ends and we see the Dude in a shop, looking for low-fat milk] just about the time of our conflict with Saddam and the Iraqis.” The Dude is then shown at the counter, where he, unimpressed, watches a TV interview with George Bush: “This will not stand, this will not stand, this aggression against Kuweit.” Shortly thereafter, urged on by his friend Walter, the Dude will take up his personal fight against a pair of intruders who damage his favourite rug.

As this short analysis of the opening sequence of The Big Lebowski

as well as the examples given above show, the very beginning (the camera’s approach to L. A. and the scene in the shop last less than three minutes) may define the setting, the character, the tone and the mood of a movie. This initial framing may serve to indicate a movie’s genre, but it may also make ironic use of generic references. What these examples of initial textual framing have in common is that they do not violate common rules and norms of the medium, thus making it easy for the audience to take up the narrative. There are, however, also examples where initial framing marks a break with the viewers’ expectations.

4. Frame-Breaking: Moving Images Without Images

and ‘Reality Games’

Such instances of frame-breaking make generic conventions visible in an act of cinematic defamiliarization. According to Aubrey, this strat-egy of ‘frame-breaking’, which has been used quite frequently in re-cent American cinema, can be achieved in a variety of ways, especial-ly in those movies which deliberately blur ontological boundaries by means of metalepsis that Aubrey refers to as “reality games” (2001:


18)19. It seems likely, however, that visual frame-breaking might have the greatest impact. Films without sound will easily be naturalised by a given model recipient, the frame being ‘silent movie’, yet it will certainly come as a surprise for him or her if a movie offers no images for an extended period of time.

The most radical example of visual frame-breaking to date is clear-ly Derek Jarman’s film Blue (1993), an autobiographic documentary about the director’s life with AIDS. The film offers only one image, a blue screen, which forms the visual background to the voice-over narration, and makes the whole film resemble a radio play broadcast in a cinema rather than a conventional film. The specific effect of this drastic reduction of visuals to the mere minimum of a monochrome screen highlights the relevance of both visual and contextual framing in film: for the first quarter of an hour or so, viewers usually try to detect movements or shapes behind the blue veil, which has been interpreted as offering a projection plane for the viewer’s own notions of the people behind the narrating voices. Only after a considerable lapse of time (or if they have been warned beforehand) will viewers

accept that they are not watching a movie but listening to a movie. While Blue only uses one, albeit a very effective, alienating fram-

ing device, Spike Jonze’s comic drama Adaptation (2002) combines various frame-breaking strategies. Watching a black screen with white titles (indicated by brackets in the excerpt), the audience has to listen

19 “Such distancing can be accomplished by an intrusive narrator (as in the opening sequence of the film Magnolia, for example, when a voiceover assures the audience that improbable coincidences can happen in real life), or by a visual cue (as in the opening scene of The French Lieutenant’s Woman, when a shot of a clapper slate indicates that a film is being made), or by a character who steps out of character (as in the film Mansfield Park, when Fanny Price looks at the camera and talks about her aspirations as a writer). Magnolia’s framing device is probably meant to be laughable, a parody of tabloid television, but the distancing devices in the other two films are meant to be taken seriously by the viewer. Indeed, such frame-breaking, meta-narrative devices are often deployed on a spirit of earnestness that is not typically postmodern.” (Aubrey 2001: 18)

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to an extended voice-over20. Two minutes and ten seconds into the movie, an awful lot of time in cinematic terms, this lengthy voice-over – an invisible protagonist’s stream of consciousness – suddenly gives way to a scene showing a film being shot in a studio. A caption in-forms the audience that this is “on the set of ‘Being John Malkovich’, Summer 1998”.

This reference to Being John Malkovich (1999), also directed by Spike Jonze, breaks (or rather: seems to break) the fictional frame, as the movie now appears to be a documentary. The audience gets even more confused when the camera focuses on one almost bald person in the foreground, identified as “John Malkovich, Actor” by another

20 “[Columbia Pictures Presents:] Do I have an original thought in my head? My bald head? [In association with Intermedia] Maybe if I were happier, my hair wouldn’t be falling out. Life is short. [A magnet / Clinica Estetico Production] Today is the first day of the rest of my life. [Nicolas Cage] I need to make the most of it. I’m a walking cliché. [Meryl Streep] I really need to go to the doctor and have my leg checked. There’s something wrong. A bump. [Chris Cooper] The dentist called again. I’m way overdue. If I stopped putting things off, I’d be happier. All I do is sit on my fat ass. [Tilda Swinton] If my ass weren’t fat, I’d be happier. [Cara Seymour] I wouldn’t have to wear these shirts with the tails out all the time. Like that’s fooling anyone. [Brain Cox] Fat ass. I should start jogging again. Five miles a day. [Judy Greer / Maggie Gyllenhaal] Really do it this time. Maybe rock climbing. I need to turn my life around. [Ron Livingston / Jay Tavare] What do I need to do? I need to fall in love. I need to have a girlfriend [Casting by Justine Baddeley and Kim Davis-Wagner] I need to read more, improve myself. What if I learned Russian or some-thing? [Executive Producers: Charlie Kaufman / Peter Saraf] Or took up an instru-ment? I could speak Chinese. [Costume Designer: Casey Storm] I would be the screenwriter who speaks Chinese. And plays the oboe. [Visual Effects Supervisor: Gray Marshall] That would be call. I should get my hair cut short. Stop trying to fool everyone into thinking I have a full head of hair. [Music by Carter Burwell] How pathetic is that? Just be real. Confident. [Editor: Eric Zumbrunnen, A.C.E.] Isn’t that what women are attracted to? [Production Designer: KK Barrett] Men don’t have to be attractive. But that’s not true, especially these days. [Director of Photography; Lance Acord] Almost as much pressure on men as there is on women these days. [Produced by: Edward Saxon / Vincent Landay / Jonathan Demme] Why should I be made to feel I have to apologize for my existence? Maybe it’s my brain chemistry. [Based on the book “The Orchid Thief” by Susan Orlean] Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me: bad chemistry. [Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman] All my problems and anxiety can be reduced to a chemical imbalance or some kind of misfiring synapses. [Directed by Spike Jonze] I need to get help for that. But I’ll still be ugly, though. Nothing’s gonna change that.”


caption – might this be the narrator of the initial voice-over (“Stop trying to fool everyone into thinking I have a full head of hair”)? Yet only a few seconds later the camera rests on another, slightly depres-sive-looking character, identified as “Charlie Kaufman, Screenwriter” (caption), who is being sent off the stage and leaves the studio. As this caption contradicts the initial credit (“Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman”), by now it becomes clear that this is a mock-documentary, deliberately blurring ontological boundaries (as in the acclaimed low-budget horror movie The Blair Witch Project, 1999, or the BBC Sitcom The Office, 1999/2003).

By now, the ‘meta-fictionality’ frame has probably been activated by the model recipient who may have watched not only Being John

Malkovich but also other recent meta-fictional Hollywood productions such as The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998) or Pleasantville (Gary Ross, 1998). As soon as (the fictional) Charlie Kaufman (played by Nicolas Cage) exits the studio, the voice-over is resumed, identifying him as the introductory speaker and as the protagonist: “What am I doing here? Why did I bother to come here today? Nobody even seems to know my name. I’ve been on this planet for 40 years and I’m no closer to understanding a single thing. Why am I here? How did I get here?”

At this point, three minutes and 15 seconds into the movie, a one-minute animated sequence is suddenly inserted, showing in quick motion the process of evolution from “Hollywood, CA, Four Billion and Forty Years Earlier” (caption) to the present day. After four min-utes and twelve seconds the ‘proper’ action starts. By this complex initial frame-breaking process, the audience has been prepared for the ‘reality game’ it is going to witness, in which Nicolas Cage doubles as Charlie’s twin brother Donald and in which the advocate of traditional screenwriting, Robert McKee (played by Brian Cox), makes a short appearance as a lecturer – in a screenwriting seminar.

Such instances of meta-narration, once restricted to independent productions, have almost become staple ingredients of Hollywood

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screenwriting in recent years. This might be regarded as an indicator of Hollywood’s search for new, experimental narrative forms. It is, however, also an indicator of a change in viewing habits: since the box-office success of The Matrix, mass audiences have got used to ontological indeterminacy to such an extent that it loses its defamil-iarizing effect and is perceived instead as yet another generic conven-tion: frame-breaking turns into a new frame.

5. Conclusion

This short article could only provide a cursory overview of different framing strategies used in films. Its shortcomings are obvious: the examples are almost exclusively chosen from American cinema and the focus is clearly on contemporary productions. Further research in this area might address intercultural as well as historical issues from a comparative angle: which framing strategies are being used in Asian cinema (Bollywood, for example) and how would we have to modify our concept of a model viewer in order to take account of the very different contexts of reception and production in India, say, as com-pared to the U. S.? And finally: how does the medium (TV movies, DVD releases including ‘making of’ documentaries or moving images produced for mobile phones) influence the framing process? If we include intercultural, historical and transmedial aspects in future re-

search on framing and film, our (critical) art won’t shrivel.

References

Aubrey, James R. (2001). “‘Reality Games’ in Postmodern Anglo-phone Cinema: The Magus, Тhe Game, The Matrix, Being John Malkovich”. Ramón Plo-Alastrué, María Jesus Martínez-Alfara, eds. Beyond Borders: Re-Defining Generic and Ontological Boundaries. Heidelberg: Winter. 16-29.

Bennett, Tony, Janet Woollacott (1987). Bond and Beyond: The Po-litical Career of a Popular Hero. Houndmills/London: Macmillan.

Bordwell, David (1985). Narration in the Fiction Film. London: Rout-ledge.


Bucknell, Brad (2002). “The Nostalgia for Progress: The New Aura and the Case of The Matrix”. Wascana Review of Contemporary Poetry and Short Fiction 37/1: 81-101.

Chion, Michael (2000). “Projections of Sound on Image”. Stam/ Miller, eds.: 111-124.

Curtis, Richard (2003). Love, Actually. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Griffin.

Duyfhuizen, Bernard (1992). Narratives of Transmission. London/ Toronto: Associated Univ. Presses.

Ellis, John (1981). Visible Fictions: Cinema, Television, Video. Lon-don: Routledge.

Faulstich, Werner (2002). Grundkurs Filmanalyse. Munich: Fink. Frow, John (2002). “The Literary Frame”. Brian Richardson, ed. Nar-

rative Dynamics: Essays on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames. Co-lumbus, OH: The Ohio State Univ. Press. 333-338.

Lukow, Gregory, Steve Ricci (1984). “The ‘Audience’ Goes ‘Public’: Intertextuality, Genre, and the Responsibilities of Film Literacy”. On Film 12: 28-36.

Lury, Karen (2000). “Here and Then: Space, Place and Nostalgia in British Youth Cinema of the 1990s”. Robert Murphy, ed. British Cinema of the 90s. London: British Film Institute. 100-108.

McKee, Robert (1997). Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York, NY: Regan Books.

Miller, Toby (2000). “Introduction”. Stam/Miller, eds.: 337-344. Neale, Steve (2000). “Questions of Genre”. Stam/Miller, eds.: 157-

178. Staiger, Janet (1992). Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical

Reception of American Cinema. Princeton, NJ/Oxford: Princeton Univ. Press.

Stam, Robert (2000). “Text and Intertext: Introduction”. Stam/Miller, eds.: 145-156.

—, Toby Miller, eds. (2000). Film and Theory: An Anthology. Mal-den/Oxford: Blackwell.

Tannen, Deborah, ed. (1993). Framing in Discourse. New York, NY: OUP.

— (1993a). “Introduction”. Tannen, ed.: 3-13. — (1993b). “What’s In a Frame? Surface Evidence for Underlying

Expectations”. Tannen, ed.: 14-56. Taylor, Lisa, Andrew Willis (1999). Media Studies: Texts, Institutions

and Audiences. London: Blackwell.

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Internet Sources

http://www.filmsite.org http://www.imdb.com

Framing Tolkien

Trailers, High Concept, and the Ring

Erik Hedling

This essay deals with the film trailers advertising the films in the Lord of the Rings cycle after J. R. R. Tolkien’s famous novel trilogy: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of King. This cycle of films proved to be one of the most profitable media ventures so far in the twenty-first century. This financial success was secured by the films adhering to the modern aesthetic of High Concept, a strategy employed by Hollywood for integrating product and marketing in the most commercially effective way. Here, this strategy is analyzed in terms of ‘the book’, ‘the look’, and ‘the hook’, qualities which were signalled particularly by the contextual framings, the trailers, specifically designed to attract millions to the cinemas and also to promote sales of various merchandise – tourism, DVDs, computer games – connected to the films. The trailers, in fact, generated so much interest that they were advertised in themselves as attractions at the cinema.

A highly commercial form of framings for artworks – in the case to be studied also commodities of popular culture – is the modern film trailer. Trailers are, in the theoretical terms of the “Introduction” to this volume, instances of ‘contextual’ framings, and according to Genette “paratexts” (Genette 1997), more specifically “epitexts”, that is, “a paratextual element not materially appended to the text within the same volume” (ibid.: 344). But trailers are also, as Lisa Kernan claims in her rigorous study Coming Attractions, “metatexts” because of “their heavily quotational aspect and the way they rhetorically re-configure scenes from the film, endowing them with persuasive con-tent” (Kernan 2004: 7).

Thus, the film trailer is both similar to, and different from, the art-work that it is framing, the film that the trailer is promoting. Kernan actually calls trailers a “unique form of narrative film exhibition, wherein promotional discourse and narrative pleasure are conjoined”

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(ibid.: 1). Sequences and sounds from the forthcoming film are em-ployed, but to that are added carefully chosen verbal rhetoric as well as a montage of graphics, moving images, and sounds from the film1. As a framing device, the trailer is, according to the terminology of the “Introduction”, as a rule, intracompositional (forming a planned unit with the ‘text’), but may sometimes also contain extracompositional elements.

In the following I will study a striking example of modern movie trailer rhetoric, an example which also happens to be intermedial, taking into particular consideration how the framings ‘frame’ the work, how they create cognitive schemas to guide the audience’s un-derstanding of the ensuing films, all in order for the producers to promote the film effectively before its theatrical release. My examples here are the three trailers for the Tolkien adaptation, The Lord of the

Rings.

The Aesthetics of High Concept

Before attending to the trailers proper, the framings, the analysis has to be preceded by some general remarks regarding modern commer-cial film-making, particularly as represented by Hollywood. In terms of film trilogies, The Lord of the Rings, the three films directed by New Zealander Peter Jackson for American New Line Cinema in 1999-2000, has become the most financially successful one of all times, beating such blockbusting series as Harry Potter, Jurassic

Park, Star Wars, and The Matrix. Each of the three films – titled, respectively, The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers

(2002), and The Return of the King (2003) – grossed nearly or more than ten times its production costs already at the international cinema box office, netting in all by September 2004 2,916,600,000 US$, that

1 As Kernan notes, trailers may sometimes contain shots not included in the fin-ished film, as in the famous case of Jack Nicholson in the trailer for As Good As It Gets (James L. Brooks, 1997) (cf. Kernan 2004: 11).

Framing Tolkien: Trailers, High Concept, and the Ring 409

is, nearly 3 billion2. Adding to that the profits from DVDs, videos, and various types of merchandise – computer games, T-shirts, posters, cups, action figures, miscellaneous memorabilia – the films will un-doubtedly prove to constitute one of the most overwhelming industrial media ventures so far in the twenty-first century.

Besides the aesthetic merits of the films themselves, this success is not so difficult to explain in terms of well-established American strategies for making blockbuster movies since the mid-seventies, or since the release of Jaws (Steven Spielberg 1975), the film that changed Hollywood history in terms of marketing strategies as well as aesthetics (cf. Schatz 1993, Shone 2004). According to film theorist Justin Wyatt, himself a former market research analyst within the film industry, films with ambitions to make large financial profits, or as they are usually called, High Concept movies, try to conform to three basic qualities which according to Wyatt’s analysis can be briefly summarized as “the book”, “the look”, and “the hook” (Wyatt 1994: 20-22).

The first quality is ‘the book’. This dimension is represented by the fact that the film should ideally be based on an already widespread narrative, since there has to be a strong force raising curiosity and attracting audiences to an otherwise unknown product. This could, as is indeed the case with The Lord of the Rings, be a widely circulated novel, here, J. R. R. Tolkien’s mega bestseller. The reputation of the book alone, along with the pure commercial power of the film me-dium, induced young cult audiences to camp outside the cinemas for several days in order to obtain tickets for the premiere. It is a fact that nearly half of all films made are based on popular novels precisely for this very reason, that is, the more knowledge the potential audience have of a story, the more likely they will be to go and see it as a film in the cinema.

2 See http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/trilogyww.htm (29-09-04) for further information.

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The basis for cinematic adaptation could also, however, for in-stance, be a successful Broadway musical, as in the cases of Evita

(Alan Parker 1996) or Chicago (Rob Marshall 2002), or legendary historical events such as, say, Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg 1998), Troy (Wolfgang Petersen 2004), or, most famously, Titanic

(James Cameron 1997), the single best selling film of all times, netting nearly 2 billion US$ worldwide (that is in cinema admissions – the videos, laser disks, DVDs, CDs, and the merchandise have most likely tripled that sum). What I wish to point out is that very few people in the world who saw Titanic were unaware of the eventual outcome of the story, how the ship was doomed to go down into the ice-cold Atlantic. Of utmost importance for the High Concept film in order to fulfill the quality of ‘the book’, then, is the overall creation of re-cognition, to make the audience feel part of a commonly shared social and medial space by means of, for instance, intertextual allusions to films, books or events, well known star actors, or strong generic markers. A story no one knows the outcome of is, although not neces-sarily by strict logic, quite likely to be Low Concept! Particularly if there are no stars in it.

Pertaining to The Lord of the Rings, no expensive movie stars in the, say, 20 million dollar league – for example, Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, or Arnold Schwarzenegger – were really needed to create the desired recognition. In his biography of Peter Jackson, Ian Pryor writes about the casting strategy that the “question con-cerned whether Jackson planned to concentrate on big-name actors or unknowns. Jackson’s answer was: unknowns” (Pryor 2004: 259). Tolkien’s novels, however, had enough intertextual star value in themselves and, as expected, some of the actors appearing in the film subsequently have become major and attractive film stars, as illus-trated by the ensuing careers of Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, Liv Tyler as Arwen Evenstar, or Orlando Bloom as Legolas. Mortensen has since then starred in Hidalgo (Joe Johnston 2004), Tyler in Jersey

Girl (Kevin Smith 2004), and Bloom, before The Lord of the Rings a


virtual unknown but by now obviously the most profitable of them all, in blockbusters like Pirates of the Caribbean (Gore Verbinski 2003) and Troy.

The second quality is ‘the look’, which indicates a certain overall stylistic design and narrative pattern. In the High Concept film this concerns particularly a strong match between music and striking im-agery, thus dividing the film into montage sequences which can be apprehended more or less like individual music videos. Narrative and character, in the classical period up until the end of the 1960s (cf. Bordwell/Thompson/Staiger 1985) often considered to be the particu-lar aesthetic strength of Hollywood cinema, are by now often greatly simplified. Indeed, narrative complexity or character development are often exchanged for spectacular action, in terms of both time and space. Film scholars have, not entirely without justification, compared the modern cinemagoing experience – of blockbuster movies, that is – to visiting an amusement park: you start with the big wheel, then you walk slowly to the dodgem car, then pause again before finishing in grand style with the roller coaster.

Regarding The Lord of the Rings, one has in terms of character psychology, for example, typically omitted one of my personal fa-vourite sequences from the novel. In the last part of The Lord of the

Rings, The Return of the King, Tolkien dwells with tragic ambiguity on the character of Saruman, the evil Grand Wizard, by describing how his spirit, in the shape of a cloud, tries to turn West after he has been murdered in the end by his own henchman Grima Wormtongue. The cloud, however, is dissolved by a sudden wind. The metaphorical meaning in Tolkien’s novel seems to indicate that there is still some-thing good left in Saruman, his spirit aiming to fulfill his destiny, to go West, to the land of the blessed, in order to enjoy eternal life, but that divine justice prevents him.

Although it would be far too facile to complain about Peter Jack-son, Philippa Boyens, and Frances Walsh, all of them Tolkien experts, and their art of adaptation – some scenes will inevitably have to go

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away as a consequence of cinematic condensation – this is still typical of the High Concept aesthetic. Whereas Tolkien’s Saruman appears dazzlingly complex in character, Jackson’s Saruman is more or less plain Grand Wizard and villain, however brilliantly played by the cinematic vampyre par préférence, Christopher Lee. Jim Smith and J. Clive Matthews write: “The on-screen Saruman is more dynamic than the literary one, a war leader played by a great star, but he is also much less complex” (Smith/Matthews 2004: 178). And in a religious study of the Jackson films, Greg Wright in his turn underlines that “Tolkien did not write Fellowship as a standalone novel, and his vil-lain, Sauron, comes into play only in the full scope of the ‘trilogy’. Jackson’s movie, however, must work as standalone entertainment, and so it must have a viable villain” (Wright 2004: 66). That villain, accordingly, must be Saruman, who is, in other words – and particu-larly as he is hauntingly incarnated by Lee – much more literal and subsequently more High Concept. That Lee’s stardom was considera-bly enhanced by the films is underlined by the fact that his is one of the distinct voices who welcomes visitors to The Lord of the Rings

homepage on the Internet3. Ideally, then, the style and narrative of a High Concept film should

even be able to be ‘summed up’ and sold in a single sentence – indeed the expression ‘High Concept’ derives exactly from this kind of lin-guistic condensation – although it would be grossly unfair to claim that the Lord of the Rings is a High Concept specimen in its purest or most negative sense. Personally, I think the films are great!

The quality of ‘the hook’, finally, pertains specifically to the mar-keting of the film, that is literally to catch as many customers as pos-sible by using advertising in a long line. A High Concept film today spends millions – say, 20-35 million US$ – on marketing, in the case of The Lord of the Rings considerably more. The hook is represented by the actual aesthetic strategy for integrating the product with the

3 http://www.lordoftherings.net (14-01-05).


marketing and merchandising, made possible by the development of new media, such as cable TV, the Internet, and DVD, and the concur-rent ownership changes within the film industry, turning the studios into fully fledged globalized, multi-medial conglomerates.

Framings

One important way of hooking up with the intended audience is – and it is here that I return to the initial subject of framings – to success-fully ‘frame’ the film for the audience before its cinematic release by ways of marketing. The most important framing, in literal terms, is the trailer, that is, the two and a half minute montage sequence that is exhibited in advance in cinemas, on DVDs, on the Internet, and on TV in order to effectively advertise the films. The importance of trailers cannot be overestimated since, as Kernan maintains, they are very “cost-effective since they utilize approximately 4.5 percent of the advertising budget of a given film, while generating at least 20 percent of the film’s box-office revenue” (Kernan 2004: 32). If that is true, it would mean that in the case of The Lord of the Rings the trailers were worth as much as a staggering 600 million US$!

The trailers were under all circumstances specifically designed to raise advance audience curiosity for the otherwise mostly unknown product, despite the fact that the films were adaptations of the novel of the 20th century4. Once the frame, the trailer, was firmly established, the product – the film – could be successfully launched. As was proved by The Lord of the Rings example, the film as such works as yet another framing, mise en abyme-like, this time for both the next installment, or sequel, in the series, and also for the extended version of the film – often substantially augmented with new sequences from the novels – released on DVD some 10 months after the initial cine-matic opening. (The theatrical version came out on DVD much earlier,

4 In 2003, viewers of the BBC’s literary program “The Big Read” voted The Lord of the Rings “The Nation’s Favourite Novel” of all time (Smith/Matthews 2004: 4).

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and devoted fans, like myself, were thus ‘forced’ to buy two in-dividual boxed DVD sets.)

In the case of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, trailers did not only function as framing future film releases but also, in a sense, as indi-vidual works of art or as framing the spectacular film medium as such. Unlike other film trailers, they were heavily advertised in themselves in the press as attractions at the cinema. Thus, one could read in the newspaper ads that along with the new great film by or with so and so, the trailer for the forthcoming Lord of the Rings film would also be screened. And the DVDs and the Internet put special emphasis on them as major events. Regarding DVDs, each release contained several different cinematic trailers or TV-spots5. And on the Internet they stimulated intense debate among Tolkien readers regarding how they indicated the overall interpretation of the novel by the film-makers; the fact is, as Ian Pryor states, the announcement of the mak-ing of The Lord of the Rings stirred enormous activity on the World Wide Web already in 1999 “with half of the world’s Tolkien fans standing by on the Internet” (Pryor 2004: 258). In the terms developed here, however, the trailers were all specifically designed – or framed – to fit and market the High Concept aesthetic, ‘the book’, ‘the look’, and ‘the hook’, albeit in ways particularly suitable for the launch of an adaptation of a bestselling cult novel.

5 Kernan stresses that it “should be noted that while the rule is still a single trailer produced per film, this can be misleading in that earlier and later versions of trailers, produced for different phases in a film’s ad campaign, often coexist” (Kernan, 2004: 238). In my study, I have consistently adhered to review what is labelled as trailer number 1 for each film, taking for granted that it was the initial and most widespread version. I do not know this, however, since there was no version documentation on the published DVDs. However, the trailers generally corresponded with my memories from the cinema. Also, they are identical on the above mentioned site on the Internet.


The Fellowship of the Ring: Commercial Pleasures of

High Art

In the first trailer, The Fellowship of the Ring, released several months before the world premiere of the film in December 2001, many ingredients underlining the ensuing movie as High Concept are presented. We have here, for instance, a focus on the spectacular set-ting in New Zealand mountain landscapes and the striking computer generated imagery applied to the landscape by the special effects com-pany Weta. Thus, as Ian Pryor states: “Some of the trilogy’s most spectacular landscapes […] are testament to movie magic more than actual locations. The Weta wizards cut and pasted a number of photo-graphic elements to create such imaginary landscapes” (Pryor 2004: 263). In spite – or perhaps even because – of this manipulation, Pryor is able to continue:

The trilogy’s use of local scenery would later be mined extensively to promote both the movies themselves and New Zealand as a prime location for tourists and filmmakers. Special maps showing where sections of the trilogy had been shot were much in demand, and a detailed pocketbook that helped fans pinpoint each location became a national bestseller. Yet for Jackson, the obsession with spot-the-location occasionally felt a little contrary to what the movies were about. He said that seeing Fellowship of the Ring with the film’s real-life locations in mind ‘defeats the purpose of a film like this’. (Pryor 2004: 263)

It certainly does not defeat the purpose of profitability, however. By means of this strategy, landscape itself is turned into a commodity, framed effectively by the trailer, and later by the film itself, and, sub-sequently, works perfectly to create the desirable synergy effects, that is: the landscape promotes the film, the film promotes the landscape. This way of going about things, in fact, epitomizes the High Concept.

In intermedial terms, one of the most interesting aspects of The

Lord of the Rings as literary adaptation, is the emphasis put on actress Liv Tyler playing Tolkien’s character of the elven princess Arwen Evenstar. Her part, much more subdued in Tolkien’s novel, is sub-stantially enhanced in Jackson’s adaptation, in the trailer exemplified by the fact that we see that it is she who in a dazzling action sequence

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dramatically saves the severely suffering Frodo during the final jour-ney towards Rivendell, her father Elrond’s dwelling. She even chal-lenges the evil Ring Wraiths of Sauron at the passage by menacingly uttering “If you want him, come and claim him”, raising her sword. In the novel, it is the elven prince Glorfindel’s horse that carries Frodo to Rivendell.

The reason for this augmentation of Arwen’s/Liv Tyler’s role is to me quite obvious. In a film specifically designed and financed to reach millions one cannot stick to Tolkien’s one-sided focus on the mascu-line. There will often have to be objects of female alignment – that is, female characters – in order to attract also women in large numbers to the cinema, not speaking of the aesthetic pleasure derived from men looking at women, a central aspect of Hollywood cinema most fa-mously theorized by Laura Mulvey (1975). Smith and Matthews write regarding the comparison of Arwen to Lúthien, the most beautiful woman on earth, or Frodo’s claim never to have seen or imagined anything so lovely as Arwen:

This is a lot for any actress to live up to, for how can any real person be more beautiful than anything the audience has ever imagined? Whether or not the then 22-year Liv Tyler comes close depends on each individual viewer’s own predilec-tions, but the fact that she had already established herself as an international sex-symbol through films such as Armageddon (Michael Bay, 1997) and modelling work before the films were cast certainly lends authority to the general idea that Arwen is impressively beautiful. (Smith/Matthews 2004: 120)

But I would also argue that the casting of Tyler still is done in order to promote codes relevant to the literary ‘seriousness’ surrounding the whole project. It is not only Armageddon that has made Tyler famous. She has also a kind of status as a ‘thinking man’s sex symbol’, repre-senting more literarily oriented values, with her particularly strong background in art films or ‘films d’auteur’ (Low Concept) like Bernardo Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty (1996), Martha Fiennes’s Pushkin adaptation Onegin (1999), or Robert Altman’s Dr. T & The

Women (2000). These connotations of High Art are, of course, further enhanced by

the strong emphasis on the received pronunciation of Gandalf in the


voice-over narrative in the trailer, played as he is by Sir Ian McKellen, Britain’s foremost Shakespearean actor in the late 20th century, or on Queen Galadriel, played by the highly esteemed Australian character actress Cate Blanchett, whose role here clearly alludes to her generally hailed part as the glamorous queen in the British blockbuster (albeit at a somewhat smaller scale) Elizabeth (Shekar Kapur 1998).

Trailers are according to Lisa Kernan generally characterized by the rhetorics of story, genre, and stardom (cf. Kernan 2004). McKel-len’s vital role in the trailer – even more so than his part in the film – can be illustrated by Kernan’s notion that

[t]he rhetoric of story utilizes such a trailer ‘narrator’ – and often a flesh-and-blood voice-over narrator as well – to promote filmic narrative. Trailers typically redouble the phenomena of narrator and narrative (a trailer narrator tells the trailer’s own narrative about the film narrative) resulting in condensed layers of storytelling about storytelling that inevitably withhold more than they reveal – and the withholding can be just as revealing as what’s shown or told. (Kernan 2004: 55)

What is particularly revealing in the present trailer, however, is that it is typically McKellen reading the voice-over who is the narrator at the beginning of the trailer, that is, before the logo of New Line Cinema appears. Then there is a cut to one of his lines of dialogue in the film. Thus, he goes from extradiegetic narrator to intradiegetic, something he does not do in the film itself where his role is exclusively intra-diegetic. Besides the pure action spectacle, the sheer beauty of the sets, and the general excitement, the film is accordingly also framed for the audience as ‘Shakespearean’, as connected to McKellen’s public image, as adding strong notions of culture and sophistication to commercial entertainment. This is indeed putting emphasis, quite literally, on ‘the book’.

High Art is here employed as a commodity adding to the High Concept, just as we are likely to hear Pavarotti sing opera over the speaker system in an airport lobby, or watch a reproduction of a Ver-meer painting in the underground station. As a high end cinematic product, The Lord of the Rings contains everything expected of it; it also, however, needs differentiation in order to cover the whole spec-

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trum of potential audiences, and hence the manifested ‘artness’, a term wittily suggested by Peter Wollen to represent a certain aura (cf. Wollen 1968/1998: 156-157). Another applicable term is certainly ‘actorliness’, coined by John Hill as a description of a peculiarly Brit-ish film acting style, strongly connected to cultural status and based on “overtly theatrical performances which clearly announce their status as performances” (Hill 1999: 82). This style pertains to both McKellen and Christopher Lee.

Also put very much forward in the trailer is the framing of generic features, that is, The Lord of the Rings is typically what I would call a family adventure spectacle, the most commercially attractive of all kinds of narrative, as is shown by cycles like Jurassic Park or Star

Wars, with actors and actresses of different age groups being able to attract universal audience interest. Hence the presentation of the hob-bits as transgressors of age, that is, they will most probably be per-ceived as children by other children.

The Two Towers: The Trailer as Attraction

The second trailer, The Two Towers, marks a certain change of em-phasis. Howard Shore’s musical score with its different thematic mo-tifs is much more underlined than in the first trailer since it was by now widely recognized by the audience. The CD of the score was released with the first film in order to create the always desirable syn-ergy effects, which means that just as the film markets the music, the music will market the film in analogy with the strategy regarding landscape I mentioned earlier. Thus, strong effects of recognition were created for the audience.

Liv Tyler and her physical beauty are yet again put at the core of developments even if she does not even take part in Tolkien’s second novel on which the film is based. In the film the inclusion of her without violation of the literary source is accomplished through a sophisticated web of flashbacks, inserts, and parallel montages, all quite generously represented in the trailer where she is present in


several different shots. Indeed, to a certain extent the trailer frames the film to be understood as a traditional love story between Aragorn and Arwen, which, of course, is not really the case even though the love story is duly, but sparingly represented in the film itself. (Needless to say, the concept of ‘boy meets girl’ is one of the ‘highest’ attractions.) Tyler’s role here is to generate romantic interest as well as female alignment, a part where she eventually receives more than apt assist-ance from actress Miranda Otto as Éowyn, the niece of the Rohan king Theoden. Audiences, however, were not yet aware of the central part that Otto was to take as female heroine in the ensuing films. Thus, the somewhat false emphasis on Tyler.

Interestingly enough, Smith and Matthews claim that there were rumours about plans for Arwen to actually become an action heroine, even participating actively in the Battle of Helm’s Deep, contrasting drastically with the role assigned to her by Tolkien (Smith/Matthews 2004: 121-122). In that way she would have been tying in nicely with the archetypal, modern female gunslinger and fistfighter in High Con-cept films like Lara Croft: Tombraider (Simon West 2001), a com-mon and very popular generic type, described by Yvonne Tasker as mobilizing a “symbolically transgressive iconography” (Tasker 1993: 132). These rumours were stengthened by the fact that, as Smith and Matthews write, “[s]hortly after the first film in the trilogy, tie-in merchandise became available, including life-sized replicas of her sword and action figures […] in battle poses” (Smith/Matthews 2004: 122). These plans, however, were quite obviously disregarded, most probably to the great pleasure of Tolkien fans, who vigorously de-bated any differences from their own interpretations of the book on the Internet.

In terms of narrative content, The Two Towers is more advertised as a pure action movie, without the ostentatious flirting with High Art of the trailer for The Fellowship of the Ring. Nor does the trailer really depend very much on the rhetorical device of ‘story’. Instead, focus is on the rhetoric of ‘genre’. By now the audience had been targeted –

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or, so to say, hooked – and the trailer could draw more on traditional High Concept spectacle for guaranteeing the financial success of the film. Here, the trailer fits perfectly Kernan’s notion of trailers as similar to films described by Tom Gunning’s famous concept of ‘cinema of attractions’, that is, pre-narrative cinematic practice up until 1906 (cf. Kernan 2004: 7). In his often quoted study, Gunning writes that

the cinema of attractions directly solicits spectator attention, inciting visual curi-osity, and supplying pleasure through an exciting spectacle – a unique event, whether fictional or documentary, that is of interest in itself. The attraction to be displayed may also be of a cinematic nature […] in which a cinematic manipula-tion […] provides the film’s novelty. Fictional situations tend to be restricted to gags […] or recreations of shocking or curious incidents […]. It is the direct ad-dress of the audience, in which an attraction is offered to the spectator by a cin-ema showman, that defines this approach to film making. Theatrical display dominates over narrative absorption, emphasizing the direct stimulation of shock or surprise at the expense of unfolding a story or creating a diegetic universe. The cinema of attractions expends little energy creating characters with psychological motivations or individual personality. Making use of both fictional and non-fictional attractions, its energy moves outward towards an acknowledged spectator rather than inward towards the character-based situations essential to classical narrative. (Gunning 1986/1990: 58-59)

Even if Gunning is describing the cinematic experience nearly a hun-dred years ago, his description still fits the way movie trailers often work as framings for coming attractions in the modern cinema – at least as is the case with the trailer for The Two Towers.

Regarding marketing strategy in the trailer, it is, thus, typical that the part dealing with Frodo’s, Sam’s, and Gollum’s lonely march into Mordor, which constitutes half of the book as well as nearly half of the film, is given so little framing space. But this part deals too much with ‘non-attractive’ elements such as psychological character devel-opment, which is much more difficult to market than epic and sus-penseful battle scenes. Instead, as Kernan claims as typical, “contem-porary trailers trumpet the pleasure of generic spectacle even more than did earlier trailers, often consciously appealing to audiences in terms that evoke nostalgia […] for the classical era” (Kernan 2004: 203). Accordingly, The Two Towers could be claimed to be framed as


‘meta-cinema’, a cinema which here is exclusively devoted to ‘the look’.

The Return of the King: Desirable Film Stars

The final trailer focuses mainly on the character of Aragorn, often in close-up.

I would claim that the trailer metaphorically outlines actor Viggo Mortensen’s metamorphosis into a major film star, one of the world’s most desirable market commodities, thus corresponding closely to Kernan’s characterization of the common rhetoric of ‘stardom’ in trailers. Also here, Kernan stresses the nostalgia:

Trailers appealing to audience interest in stars in the contemporay era demonstrate a return to formula in the context of a Hollywood economy dominated by high concept marketing. Star appeals are increasingly integrated with those of story and genre in high-tech contemporary trailers that fluidly weave these appeals together using multiple grids and sophisticated applications of music, sound effects and dialogue overlaps, along with graphics and text that cue viewers to the key art of the overall campaign. (Kernan 2004: 205)

This promotion of Mortensen’s stardom is achieved by means of showing how he gradually ascends to the throne of Gondor: his being given the reforged royal sword, his role as responsible politician, charismatic war leader, and, not least, erotic lover. Thus, he marries the beautiful Arwen Evenstar, and Liv Tyler is once again lavishly but not very faithfully – neither to the ensuing film nor to the novel – represented in the trailer, all for reasons dwelt upon above. Mortensen was a most suitable star to emerge from The Lord of the Rings, with his connotations of ‘artness’, being, as Pryor notes, an art photogra-pher and a published poet (cf. Pryor 2004: 268).

Mortensen is also given the extreme privilege of addressing the audience (in the ensuing film, of course, also to the armies of Rohan and Gondor outside the gates of Mordor) in an ideologically charged monologue, in the trailer heard partly as voice-over against a montage of various imagery from the film. Here, he exclaims: “I see in your eyes the same fear that will take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we foresake our friends and

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brake all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day. This day we fight.” In terms of dramaturgy, this is clearly a descendant of Henry the Fifth’s famous Agincourt address – “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers” (Henry V, IV: 3) – in Shakespeare’s play. This kind of address has been employed in post-1991 High Concept blockbust-ers as a vehicle for, for instance, the American president, as in Inde-

pendence Day (Roland Emmerich 1996) and yet again, albeit with very different political connotations, in the same director’s Day After

Tomorrow (Roland Emmerich 2004). As far as I can see, the reason for including so much of this address about the necessity of fighting against evil must have been to try to profit from assumed sentiments among primarily American audiences regarding the situation in the world at the time of the trailer’s release in 2003 (the war against ter-rorism). Anyhow, the first two films had elevated Mortensen to star-dom and, accordingly, the trailer for the third film could profit gener-ously from it. He was to be employed as bait, or indeed as ‘the hook’.

This does not mean that the focus put on Mortensen excludes the other actors, or rather at this stage, ‘stars’. Instead, the trailer is heav-ily engaged in what Kernan also claims to be typical of contemporary trailers: “star pairings” and the “interconnection of multiple stars”, all in order to maximize the commercial desirability of the product (Ker-nan 2004: 71). Regarding the character of Éowyn and her part in The

Two Towers, Smith and Matthews write:

The expansion of Éowyn’s character in the second film serves to make her far more memorable than she is in the book. She not only has a far greater physical presence, but she is also shown practising sword play (preparing the audience for her confrontation with the Witch King of Angmar), she is given expository dia-logue that belongs to Éomer or Theoden in the book, and she has a far more ap-parent romantic interest in Aragorn. (Smith/Matthews 2004: 189)

This preparation for the cinematically attractive duel is obvious in the trailer for The Return of the King, since we get a couple of shots of Miranda Otto in full armour. Thus, she takes on the role which appar-ently was originally accorded to Liv Tyler as the warlike Amazon, the action heroine, raising considerable female interest in the film, at least, I surmise, among younger women. Although I do not know it, I would


have thought that this strategy worked well in commercial terms and even better than the filmmakers originally thought, at least judging from the fact that Tyler receives much more attention in the trailer than Otto. In the ensuing film, it is the other way round6.

Closing Remarks

The trailers framing The Lord of the Rings trilogy for its huge poten-tial audience firmly situated the films within the High Concept aes-thetic and they did subscribe heavily to the Hollywood marketing strategy of ‘the book’, ‘the look’, and ‘the hook’. That is, they put their emphasis on special effects instead of on more traditional narra-tive, as in the spectacular digitized battles; they foregrounded music and image in the shape of Howard Shore’s bombastic and much pub-licised score; they contained close-ups of desirable stars, like, for instance, Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, or Liv Tyler as Arwen Even-star; they presented an attractive and heavily designed world; and they contained intertextual allusions in order to make certain the audience’s recognition of a by now well known medial space. They also adhered to typical aspects of movie trailer-making in employing the combined rhetorics suggested by Lisa Kernan: story, genre, and stardom.

As framings of cinematic Tolkien adaptations, I would claim that they, unsurprisingly, emphasized grandiose form more than subtle content. They were, quite plainly, advertising in the High Concept mode, stressing the ‘bigger, longer, better’ aspects of the Hollywood product. There was, as far as I can see, no outspoken ideological read-ing of the book at work, as, for instance, commented on by Greg Wright, who claims that Tolkien’s Catholic vision was lost in the films (cf. Wright 2004: 172-184). That does not mean that the films,

6 I am speculating about female audience interest in Miranda Otto’s characteriza-tion of Éowyn. Answers to this open question, however, will undoubtedly be provided by the forthcoming publications connected with the impressive Lord of the Rings project, a survey of audiences in 19 countries led by Martin Barker at the University of Aberystwyth, UK.

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or trailers, were devoid of ideological content: I have already men-tioned the speech of Aragorn in the trailer for The Return of the King, but one could also mention many biased expressions of class, ethnic-ity, and even gender. But that is a different story from the one I have told.

Besides guaranteeing the financial success of the movie world-wide, the trailers also managed to create a so far unheard of interest for themselves, confirmed particularly by the alleged production of a six-minute supertrailer, a superframing for the whole series. This could frame future re-releases of the whole series but also stand as a monument for the elevation of contextual framings into a kind of framed texts on their own.

References

Bordwell, David, Kristin Thompson, Janet Staiger (1985). The Classi-cal Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960. London: Routledge.

Genette, Gérard (1997). Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Transl. by Jane E. Lewin. New York, NY: Cambridge UP.

Gunning, Tom (1986/1990). “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde”. Thomas Elsaesser, ed. Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative. London: BFI Publishing. 56-62.

Hill, John (1999). British Cinema in the 1980s. Oxford: OUP. Kernan, Lisa (2004). Coming Attractions: Reading American Movie

Trailers. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Mulvey, Laura (1975). “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”.

Screen 16/3: 6-18. Pryor, Ian (2004). Peter Jackson: From Prince of Splatter to Lord of

the Rings. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Schatz, Thomas (1993). “The New Hollywood”. Jim Collins, Hilary

Radner, Ava Preacher Collins, eds. Film Theory Goes to the Mov-ies. New York, NY/London: Routledge. 8-36.

Shone, Tom (2004). Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer. New York, NY: Free Press.

Smith, Jim, J. Clive Matthews (2004). The Lord of the Rings: The Films, The Books, The Radio Series. London: Virgin.


Tasker, Yvonne (1993). Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema. London/New York, NY: Routledge.

Wollen, Peter (1968/1998). Signs and Meaning in the Cinema. Lon-don: British Film Institute.

Wright, Greg (2004). Peter Jackson in Perspective: The Power behind Cinema’s The Lord of the Rings. Burien, WA: Hollywood Jesus Books.

Wyatt, Justin (1994). High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Holly-wood. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.


Framing in Music


Framing and Deframing the Opera

The Overture

Michael Walter

Whereas courtly feasts were usually announced by improvised fanfares (‘contex-tual framings’) Monteverdi’s Toccata to L’Orfeo (1607) marked the change to a ‘textual framing’ by musically sublimating the usual fanfares since the Toccatashows a rudimentary musical form and was fixed in a score thus bearing the fea-tures of ‘art music’. Subsequently, a problem developed in the function of the overture as an initial framing insofar as the overture consists of music as does the opera performance. Presumably, in order to solve the problem of the necessary difference between the initial framing and the performance overtures remained musically independent from the operas and developed their own musical form. However, music theorists from the 1730s onwards demanded a dramatic connec-tion between the overture and the ensuing opera. Gluck’s overture (Intrada) to his opera Alceste (1767) tried to represent the dramatic action of the opera already in the overture (which musically leads directly into the first scene of the opera). Due to this close connection the overture could not serve as a framing to the opera anymore. Jean-Jacques Rousseau criticized this ‘deframing’ of Alceste since the audience would already have to know the action of the opera before the overture has been heard (this temporal contradiction is a specific problem with temporal arts). What is more, Gluck denied the audience the initial framing of the ‘ficti-tious’ dramatic world of the opera. In the 19th century composers often chose be-tween two main types of overtures: the short prelude and the ‘potpourri overture’. The latter is clearly a ‘paratextual framing’ whereas preludes are in most cases ‘intratextual framings’. Richard Strauss’s Salome (1905), for example, lacks an overture. His intention was to contradict the institutional frame represented by the opera house itself with the abrupt beginning of his opera. In doing so he plays with the framing function of the overture ex negativo and denies the audience the distinction between everyday life and dramatic life on stage in order to increase the effect of his opera.

Basically, an opera overture is a piece of music played in advance of an opera. Of course, this merely pragmatic description betrays nothing of the function of this piece of music or its forms. In the following article, I will be concerned primarily with functions of overtures as framing borders than with musical forms since, in general, forms depend on functions. However, I do not aim to provide a theory for

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the overture, rather I will discuss three very different examples and suggest some possible explanations for their understanding. My – nearly compulsory – starting point is the famous Toccata for Monte-verdi’s first opera, L’Orfeo.

We know that L’Orfeo was performed in 1607 at Mantua in front of the Accademia degli Invaghiti, although Monteverdi’s commission for this opera is not precisely documented. At that time the Accademia had no permanent location for its meetings. Therefore it is unknown where the performance took place, apart from the fact that it took place in a relatively small hall. The instigator of the composition might well have been Prince Francesco Gonzaga, to whom the printed score is dedicated.

Court entertainments were frequently announced by fanfares. There is a simple reason for this: courtly life was characterized by ceremonial behaviour. However, there were different levels of courtly events. Since the rules of the ceremonial applied to all levels, there was the need for a means of distinguishing them, which was the fan-fare. This is the reason for the existence of the court trumpeters in the Holy German Empire or that of the Grand Ecurie du Roi in France, whose task it was to announce the King, as the presence of the King represented a different ceremonial level.

These ceremonial rules also applied to operas, which were part of courtly festivities, such as “royal weddings, princely birthdays, or state visits” (Kimbell 1991: 53). David Kimbell explicitly emphasized the connection of courtly fanfares and Monteverdi’s Toccata:

While ritornellos and sinfonias are used by Monteverdi to frame the dramatic ac-tion and to create architectural patterns out of the very stuff of his drama, the toc-cata and moresca [i.e. the musical piece at the end of the opera; M. W.] provide a framing of a more extrinsic kind. Almost all Italian opera is intimately linked to the environment for which it was composed, and Orfeo is no exception. It is at home, not in the theatre, but amid the gorgeous paintings, the glittering mirrors and chandeliers, the cultivated assembly of guests who on great occasions of state thronged the halls of a Renaissance prince. These two movements are part of the ceremonial that belonged to such an occasion. They provide a frame which sets the opera apart from the rest of the evening’s entertainment, but they do not them-selves form an integral part of the opera at all. The Toccata summons the noble

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guests to the hall; the moresca, like Bottom’s Bergomask, dismisses them at close. (Ibid.: 78)

Although this is true for early opera in general, I am not convinced that Kimbell’s remark is true for L’Orfeo since the opera was not con-nected to, or part of, a courtly feast. Fanfares or the announcement of operas as parts of a courtly feast were obligatory because there was no difference between the private and public spheres in European ceremonial societies. The fanfares had the additional framing function of indicating a particular cognitive frame, namely that the happenings in the opera were not part of the usual ceremonial life, that it belonged to another sphere. This was the more important function because often there was no real stage in the modern sense, as was the case with all early operas at the beginning of the 17th century: often with early theaters

the theater was little more than a hall with a stage, stage machinery, and seating installed as necessary. At first the stage was often connected with the parterre by steps or a ramp, as at the Uffizi Palace theater, Florence, and the Teatro Barberini, Rome, so that the action could extend to the main floor as in ‘theater in the round’ and so that performers could descend from the stage and join the audience in dancing at the end of a performance. (Forsyth 1985: 73)

It may sound ridiculous that there were difficulties in distinguishing between opera action and everyday life, but one has to bear in mind that up to the 18th century, on the one hand, the singers were part of the court and, on the other hand, aristocrats, even kings themselves, participated in the stage action, at least in courtly ballets (which were often part of an opera). Therefore, a real difference between the audi-ence and the actors did not exist. It suffices to mention the most fa-mous example of Louis XIV, who participated as a dancer in court ballets. This was not unusual. In fact, up to the late 18th century, the stage world, at least regarding opera seria, did not differ from the ‘normal world’, i.e. the world of princes and kings. Even the dress of the singers differed only in some – although remarkable – details from the usual courtly clothes, for example with regard to the helmets. The actions of opere serie were often understood as political allegories. Indeed, in the 18th century this lack of discernible differences between

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the real and fictitious spheres became a problem since singers who represented kings and aristocrats did not only behave on stage as aris-tocrats but sometimes also during normal courtly life, which often caused disciplinary problems. Hence, it was important to give some indication that the people on stage, even if they were kings, belonged to a fictitious ceremonial sphere.

However, all these circumstances (‘extracompositional framings’) did not yet apply to Monteverdi’s opera (except for the lack of a real opera house). The reason for the commission of Monteverdi’s work was merely enthusiasm for the new and just emerging genre of opera, not only Monteverdi’s own enthusiasm but also that of Francesco Gonzaga and of the learned members of the humanist Accademia. There was a second performance of L’Orfeo, as we know from a letter from Francesco Gonzaga to his brother in Pisa. This time, the per-formance was “in the presence of all ladies of this town” (quoted in Leopold 1988: 110), as Francesco Gonzaga wrote. His phrasing is puzzling. It implies that the first performance took place without the attendance of those ladies or of any ladies at all. The participation of “ladies” in the second performance seems to demonstrate the intention of the Prince of Mantua, who had been enthusiastic about the work, to exploit the second performance as an occasion for a festive representation of the court’s cultural achievement. Otherwise, the

invitation to all ladies of the town would be meaningless. Conversely, this means that the original performance was restricted to the members of the academy and thus had not been a courtly event in the real sense of the word. Therefore, it had been possible for Monteverdi not to abide by the court ceremonial, i.e. just presupposing the usual im-provised simple fanfare serving as a marking of a border between ‘normal’ life and performance. The original setting of L’Orfeo rather enabled Monteverdi to compose a more elaborate fanfare that bears attributes of artificial music.

On the surface, the Toccata is nothing more than an embellished D-major chord, but it is set for five parts instead of being improvised


and it consists of a threefold repetition. In other words, the Toccata

shows a rudimentary musical form. What is more, for the first time in the admittedly short history of opera, a fanfare was written down in a score. Hence it became a fixed piece of music as opposed to impro-vised fanfares from the court trumpeters. ‘After the preceding opera endeavours in Florence’ Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo was ‘the first musical drama which has predominantly the character of a work of art’1 and as a consequence it was near to musically ‘sublimating’ (cf. Scheiber 1988: 47) the usual courtly fanfare, which marked the shift from a ‘contextual framing’ to a ‘textual framing’.

The function of an improvised fanfare as an initial framing is clearly audible because such a fanfare does not incorporate advanced features of musical art, it is simply artless. Monteverdi’s Toccata, however, is at least on the threshold of the realm of art music. Subse-quently, the pieces of music preceding operas turned into artful com-positions, and precisely this seemed to be the problem of an initial framing of an opera by a real overture: for its essential part, the opera performance consists of music, but the means of framing it equally consists of music and is part of the evening’s performance. Hence, the framing might easily be seen as part of what is to be framed, or in other words: the initial framing is in danger of being lost. On the one hand, there was the function of the overture as an institution that served as a framing of the opera. On the other hand, there was the purely musical character of the overtures resulting from the develop-ment of musical forms that made the overture part of the musical per-formance. (This might be the reason why in the 19th century compos-ers like Rossini and others reduced the development section of an overture in sonata form to a rudimentary section or even did without it: the character of an advanced artful composition remained reduced compared to the opera’s music.)

1 “Monteverdis L’Orfeo ist nach den vorausgegangenen Opernversuchen in Flo-renz, an die er stofflich anknüpft […], das erste musikalische Drama, das weitgehend werkhaften Charakter hat.” (Osthoff 1991: 243)

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Presumably to solve this problem of the necessary difference be-tween opera and overture, most composers in the 17th and 18th centu-ries composed overtures that musically had nothing in common with the opera they preceded. The overtures remained musical pieces inde-pendent of the opera’s dramatic or musical contents. Overtures had their own musical meaning in order to maintain the necessary differ-ence between frame and opera. As a result, the musical form of the overture was enlarged to a three-movement piece of music. It is not by coincidence that the symphonies for the concert hall have their roots in such overtures, normally called sinfonie. The sinfonie were inter-changeable or could be performed without the opera in a concert hall (the latter was the beginning of the history of the symphony). Many of the opera sinfonie clearly showed vestiges of the old tradition of the fanfare opening of courtly events, which was also the case for many early symphonies for the concert hall.

The function of these overtures in the 17th and 18th centuries was not so much a musical one, rather a social or institutional one. They indicated the beginning of the opera and reminded the opera audiences of the silence necessary for the opera performance. Or, in the words of Richard Wagner: ‘The musical pieces, so it seems, wanted to tell the audience nothing other than that there will be some singing today’2.

Nevertheless, since overtures were pieces of artificial music, from the 1730s onwards German music theorists in particular demanded a dramatic connection between the overture and the opera (cf. Botstiber 1913). Johann Joachim Quantz may serve as an example. In 1752 he expressed the opinion that the overture, instead of ending with a merry menuetto, should be in some way tied to the opera to follow or at least to its first scene (cf. Quantz 1752: 301). In the second half of the 18th

century there was a broad debate among music aestheticians on this issue. At first, the composers themselves were not very concerned

2 “Diese Musikstücke schienen dem Publikum nichts anderes haben sagen zu wol-len, als daß heute gesungen werde.” (Wagner 1840/1841: 194)


about this issue, but in the last third of the century some responded to it, among them Gluck.

Gluck’s so-called reform opera Alceste was performed for the first time in 1767. In his preface to the score, the composer wrote about the overture: ‘I have felt that the overture ought to apprise the spectators of the nature of the action that is to be represented and to form, as it were, its argument [...]’3. Although Gluck used the usual Italian term sinfonia for the overture in his preface, the actual piece of music is entitled Intrada, thus stressing the musically unusual character of the overture, which already evokes the gloomy atmosphere of the opera. In the original Italian version of the opera its overture ends on the dominant, whereas in the Paris version of 1776 the overture leads directly into the introductory chorus (cf. Botstiber 1913: 122). This difference hardly matters since in both versions there is no real end to the overture (which would require a cadence in the tonic). Due to this narrow connection between the overture and opera, the overture can-not really serve as a case of framing, it lacks the necessary difference between framing and framed.

In his observations on Alceste, Jean-Jacques Rousseau criticized exactly this deframing of the opera. According to Rousseau, an over-ture has the function of opening the hearts of the spectators for the action to follow; he was strongly opposed to overtures which musi-cally depicted the action or the characters of the opera in advance (cf. Rousseau 1826a). Although Gluck had intended to prepare the audi-ence for the mourning they would plunge into with his overture, as Rousseau observed4, the French critique nevertheless had three objec-tions:

3 “Ho imaginato che la Sinfonia debbe prevenir gli Spettatori dell’azione, che ha da rappresentarsi, e formarne, per dir cosi l’argomento [...]” (qtd. in Croll/Dean 1980: 467). For a different translation cf. Howard 1995: 85.

4 “[...] l’auteur a eu l’intention d’y préparer les spectateurs à la tristesse où il alloit les plonger dès le commencement du premier acte et dans tout le cours de la pièce [...]” (Rousseau 1826: 148).

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1. Given the dramatic contents of the opera, Gluck necessarily had to compose a harmonic tissue, which lacks full sonority and therefore is unable to sufficiently raise the interest of the audience.

2. Since the harmonic tissue, which already characterizes the over-ture, is often employed in the opera itself, there is a danger of sur-feit.

3. Rousseau objected to the expression of pain in the overture, which had seen no precedent on stage at this point and contradicts the first scene of the opera consisting only of a herald’s message.

The first two objections directly aim at the fact that Gluck’s overture is already part of the opera and does not serve as a mere preparation for the opera and its dramatic action. The last objection refers not only to an illogical musico-dramatic transition to the first scene, but also indirectly implies the main problem. In order to understand the overture and its expressive character as well as its anomalous musical form, the audience needs to know the contents of the opera, which is not the case at the moment the overture is played. In other words, the meaning of the framing is determined by the contents to be framed. However, the function of framing is to provide the references for un-derstanding the meaning of the to-be-framed and not to provide a meaning itself. In the case in question, this meaning of the framing cannot be understood because in a circular way the meaning depends on the action to follow. This problem only occurs in exclusively tem-poral arts, especially music: it is not possible to browse through an opera as, for example, through a book. If the initial framing of a book is unclear to the reader, he has the opportunity to look it up again after he has read several chapters of the book (or the complete book). The reader can turn the book’s pages back and forth. With music the initial framing has passed leaving no possibility for a listener to ‘turn the music back’ (unless he listens to the work again). Richard Wagner ironically suggested that programmatic overtures, in order to be fully understood, should not be played in advance of an opera but rather


after it5. One could argue that opera-goers often attended the same opera several times, and not only in the case of Gluck’s overture toAlceste. But if an opera were being seen and heard for the second time, the framing overture would have already lost its function of preparing the audience for the framed, thus losing the need for a framing, apart from its function as a contextual framing. This is one of the contradictions of the overture’s function and leads to the problem of balance with regard to the musical attraction of the overture. On the one hand, the new kind of overture should be sufficiently attractive to make it worth listening to more than once, but on the other hand the overture should not become the main piece of the performance altogether. Why, then, did Gluck compose this overture? In his dedication to the later opera Paride ed Elena, he defended his music to Alceste, stressing that he had hoped to find followers on the already open road, supported by enlightened audiences6. Gluck intended to establish a “beautiful simplicity” (“bella semplicità”, quoted in Croll/Dean 1980: 467) and a more natural dramatic action: “I have striven to restrict music to its true office of serving poetry by means of expression and 5 “[...] jeder Verständige weiß, daß diese Tonstücke – sobald in ihnen überhaupt etwas zu verstehen war – anstatt vor dem Drama, nach demselben vorgetragen werden müßten, um verstanden zu werden. Die Eitelkeit verführte den Musiker, in der Ouvertüre – und zwar im glücklichsten Falle – die Ahnung schon mit absolut musikalischer Gewißheit über den Gang des Dramas erfüllen zu wollen.” (Wagner 1850/1851: 332) (“Every man of common sense must know that these tone-pieces – provided there was aught to understand in them at all – should have been performed after the drama, instead of before it, if they were meant to be understood. Vanity has betrayed the musician – even in the most favourable cases – into wanting to fulfil the Foreboding in the very Overture itself, and that, with an absolute-musical certainty about the whole plot of the drama.” English translation by William Ashton Ellis, The Wagner Library. Edition 1.0, http://users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/prose/wlpr0063.htm [10 February 2005].) Wagner claims to allude to the ‘modern overture’.

6 “L’unica ragione, che m’aveva indotto a publicar colle Stampe la mia Musica dell’Alceste, era la speranza di trovar de’seguaci, che per la strada già aperta, e stimo-lati da’pieni suffragi d’un Pubblico illuminato, s’animassero a distruggere gli abusi introdotti nello Spettacolo Italiano, e a portarlo, quanto più oltre si possa, alla per-fezione.” (Qtd. in Einstein [n.d., ca. 1954]: 165).

438 Michael Walter

by following the situations of the story, without interrupting the action or stifling it with a useless superfluity of ornaments [...]” (qtd. in Croll/Dean 1980: 467)7. This was aimed at the usual Metastasian op-

ere serie, which were considered to be untrue and contrary to nature by Gluck and his poet Raniero de’ Calzabigi. Calzabigi in particular accused the Metastasian type of opera of discouraging the intellectual and therefore enlightened discourse with regard to opera: the plan of Metastasio’s dramas “seems to exclude the attention of the spectator (on account of the length caused by the quantity of verses and the elaboration of the music)” and “the public neither expected nor de-manded more than a pair of arias and the duet, without even attempt-ing to understand the words”8.

These aesthetic or intellectual goals obviously were not shared by the audiences of the first performances in Vienna, especially with regard to dramatic naturalness: Gluck and Calzabigi chose performers

7 “Pensai di ristringer la Musica al suo vero ufficio di servire alla Poesia per 1’espressione, e per le situazioni della Favola, senza interromper 1’Azione, o raffre-darla con degl’inutile superflui ornamenti [...]” (qtd. in Croll/Dean 1980: 467 and Einstein [n.d., ca. 1954]: 142).

8 Calzabigi, Letter of March 6, 1767, to Kaunitz, quoted in Brown 1991: 359-360: “The dramas of the Sig. Abate Metastasio, the plan of which seems to exclude the at-tention of the spectator (on account of the length caused by the quantity of verses and the elaboration of the music), have the sole distinction of being saddles for all horses, whence it has always been a matter of indifference whether a character in these dra-mas was played by Farinello, Caffarello, Guadagni or Toschi or Tesi, by Gabrielli or Bianchi, since from these [characters] the public neither expected nor demanded more than a pair of arias and the duet, without even attempting to understand the words, since before coming to the performance it had abandoned all thought of becoming involved in the action – it not being possible to lend five hours’ attention to six actors, four of whom are ordinarily so inept, that they hardly know how to pronounce – in order to gain at such a cost the pleasure of becoming impassionate for the insipid Clelias, the frigid Ersilias, the imaginary Aristeas, the insolent Emiras, the indecent Onorias and the impudent Mandanes; all of whom are really nothing but little Roman or Neapolitan courtisans who speak a polished language and gossip about love on the stage. I will say nothing of the heroes who are always contrary to nature, there never being encountered in this world characters as full of philosophy as are the Metastasian Horaces, Temistocles, Catos and Romuluses.”


who were excellent as actors but less excellent as singers9. In his opera as well as in his overture, Gluck had ignored the horizon of the expec-tations of the public, who wished for the ‘unnatural fictitious world’ on the opera stage rather than a natural world (at least with regard to the musico-dramatic content and the acting of the singers). However, a framing has to deal with this very horizon. With regard to Alceste this means that the public did not expect natural behaviour on stage in the trivial sense. For the audience behaving naturally on stage still meant behaving in a ceremonial way even under the conditions of a fictitious stage world. The idea that naturalness could mean something different to such behaviour was only just emerging but was not yet a general idea10.

The issue at stake with Gluck’s opera was how one can cope with the function of an overture as a framing and at the same time do jus-tice to the contemporary advanced aesthetic demands, which were more concerned with musical content than with the largely extra-musical function of the overture, and which composers had to observe with regard to the societal conditions for the success of opera produc-tions.

The problem of a difference between the ‘stage world’ and the natural world did not exist anymore in the 19th century. Operas were accepted as ‘worlds in their own right’, and the stage protagonists were not expected to behave ‘naturally’. Quite the opposite was the case: librettists and composers looked for the most unnatural situations in order to create emotionally powerful situations for the music. It 9 Cf. Henze-Döhring 1987: according to Calzabigi, later performances in 1770, 1781 and 1786 reached a total of 90 performances. But, as in Vienna, the first per-formances of the French version in 1776 seemed to have been unsuccessful.

10 With regard to opera, in the 17th century ‘naturalness’ and ‘nature’ were terms often synonymous with ‘rationality’ and ‘truth’, whereas in the second half of the 18th

century ‘imitating nature’ often meant ‘spontaneity’, ‘emotion’, or ‘expression’ [see Fubini 1997: 135-136 and Walter 2000a]. This applied to the aesthetic discourse and perhaps less to the wishes of the audience, which might be the reason for the delayed application of this discourse to actual opera compositions.

440 Michael Walter

suffices to mention the frequent madness scenes in Italian opera (not only of women but also of men, as in Verdi’s Nabucco, 1842, or Donizetti’s L’esule di Roma, 1828) or the finale scenes of some of Donizetti’s operas: Maria in Maria de Rudenz (1838) murders her rival Matilde, which causes Matilde’s lover Corrado to try to murder Maria (his former lover), who is already bleeding to death from a wound she received because she has been stabbed by Corrado earlier (but erroneously not to death). Parisina (Parisina d’Este, 1833) dies because the corpse of her decapitated lover is shown to her by her husband; Gabriella (Gabriella de Vergy, not performed before 1978 but composed in the late 1820s) dies because her husband Fayello presents her the bleading heart of his rival Raoul, torn out of him dur-ing a duello by Fayel. The situation in German opera was not very different: the so-called ‘wolf’s glen’ in Weber’s Freischütz (1821) with its unnatural events and the casting of seven magic bullets was as far away from a natural world as Marschner’s Der Vampyr (1828), in which Lord Ruthven (the vampire), in his aria, is enthusiastic about sucking blood from a maiden’s chest. Such operas show clearly that the horizon of expectations, whose trajectory was to maintain a clear distance to the old traditions of courtly opera under the conditions of mainly bourgeois audiences, had markedly changed.

In the 19th century composers often chose between two main types of overtures: the short prelude and the ‘potpourri’ overture, i.e. a medley of tunes from the opera (sometimes in sonata form, sometimes not). The use of ‘potpourri’ overtures solved the problem of the nec-essary difference between the opera and the overture as a framing, since this kind of overture is clearly a paratextual framing. It is loosely connected to the work by its tunes but does not belong to the work proper. In a certain sense this kind of overture serves only as a musical extension of the large foyers of 19th-century opera houses.

As an alternative, the prelude was chosen for many operas (as was the case long before Wagner’s and Verdi’s preludes by composers such as Bellini and Donizetti). Whereas the loose ties of the ‘pot-


pourri’ overture allow the performance of the overture as a ‘stand-alone’ piece of music, the prelude usually only introduces the mood of the opera or the action. The prelude to Verdi’s Rigoletto or Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde may serve as examples. The former consists of the motive of the curse (Rigoletto: “Quel vecchio maledivami!”), which dissolves “in a chain of sobbing figures on violins and upper woodwind” (Budden 1992: 487) thus giving a clue to the core motive of the action and its deplorable outcome. However, the listener need not be able to relate the curse motive to the relevant scene of the op-era, which is as yet unknown to him. Rather, the dramatic motive with its double dotted rhythm (and lacking a melodical contour) in the trombones and trumpets signals that there will be a shift from the following seemingly cheerful atmosphere of the first scene to a fatal ensnarement. The latter of the two examples expresses the basic no-tion of ‘longing’ for love and for death in the opera Tristan und

Isolde, mainly through the harmonically unsolved ‘Tristan motive’ and the woodwind orchestration with the leading oboe at the begin-ning. (Since the oboe is one of the instruments nearest to the human voice it gives the whole motive a ‘human’ touch, which contrasts to the rather abstract harmonic device, thus giving the motive a double tension: a harmonic one and at the same time the strained antagonism of the instrumentally alluded to but not achieved human voice).

As opposed to ‘potpourri’ overtures, preludes are in most cases in-tratextual framings since they provide a cognitive frame for a unique opera and are only understandable as a musical derivation from, and as an introduction to, this opera (and not as an independent piece of music). The difference between these preludes and Gluck’s overture to Alceste is marked by the preludes’ lack in musical depiction of the dramatic content as well as in a traditional formal device, and their comparative shortness. This undermines a particular and independent musical meaning and reduces the preludes’ function to the framing of dramatic contents or at least the indication of specific moods of the ensuing actions. Despite their close connection to the respective

442 Michael Walter

operas, for audiences the preludes were acceptable as framing devices due to the contemporary demand for musical originality (represented by the uniqueness of the preludes) and a new notion of opera as a work of art (both are opposed to the older notion of opera as a work that should only fulfill the demands of the genre). Thus, the precondi-tion of the prelude as ‘art music’ was a shift from the frame ‘enter-tainment’ to the frame ‘artwork’ for the opera as well as for its fram-ing (the overture)11. Wagner’s accusation in Oper und Drama (1850/ 1851) of Rossini being too popular mirrors this shift12. However, if the frame ‘artwork’ applied not only to opera itself but also to its prelude, which to that extent was to lose its framing difference, why then, one could argue, need there be a prelude to an opera at all? This question is all the more relevant since the societal conditions for opera performances changed in the late 19th century. A logical corollary was the strong tendency to renounce preludes or even overtures in operas

11 Cf. for example Tomlinson 1986 for Italian opera.

12 Cf. Wagner 1850/1851: 44-45: “Erfuhr er [Rossini], daß das Publikum dieser einen Stadt besonders gern Läufe der Sängerinnen hörte, das der anderen dagegen lie-ber schmachtenden Gesang, so gab er für die erste Stadt seinen Sängerinnen nur Läu-fe, für die zweite nur schmachtenden Gesang. Wußte er, daß man hier gern die Trom-mel im Orchester hörte, so ließ er sogleich die Ouvertüre zu einer ländlichen Oper mit Trommelwirbel beginnen; wurde ihm gesagt, daß man dort leidenschaftlich das Cres-cendo in Ensemblesätzen liebte, so setzte er seine Oper in der Form eines beständig wiederkehrenden Crescendos. – Nur einmal hatte er Grund, seine Gefälligkeit zu be-reuen. Für Neapel riet man ihm, sorgfältiger in seinem Satze zu verfahren: seine soli-der gearbeitete Oper sprach nicht an, und Rossini nahm sich vor, nie in seinem Leben wieder auf Sorgfalt bedacht zu sein, selbst wenn man ihm dies anriete. –” (“Did he learn that the public of one city had a particular fancy for prima donnas’ runs, while another preferred a sentimental song: straightway he gave [44] his prima donnas nothing but runs, for the first city; for the second, only sentimental songs. Did he discover that here folk liked to hear the drum in the band: at once he made the over-ture to a rustic opera begin with a rolling of the drum. Was he told that people there were passionately fond of a crescendo, in ensemble-pieces: he sat down and wrote an opera in the form of a continuously recurring crescendo. – Only once had he cause to rue his complaisance. For Naples he was advised to be more careful with his construction: his more solidly built-up opera did not take; and Rossini resolved never in his life again to think of carefulness, even if advised to. –” (Translation by William Ashton Ellis, The Wagner Library. Edition 1.0, http://users.belgacom.net/ wagnerlibrary/prose/wlpr0063.htm [10 February 2005])


composed in the 20th century, often in order to increase the effect of an opera’s beginning.

The last example, therefore, is a very simple one since it refers to an opera without an overture: Richard Strauss’ Salome, first per-formed in 1905. Of course, at that time there were already differences between the behaviour of the singers on stage (be it as protagonists or as people) and normal life behaviour. Salome, a 16-year-old over-sexed teenager, who wears only allusions to clothes, strips on stage, has nothing in mind other than kissing a prophet and finally is suc-cessful in kissing the decapitated head of the said prophet. This is far from the behaviour usually expected of a teenager at the end of the 19th century. But in contrast to the operas mentioned above Strauss played with the tension between the societal expectations of how a

teenager should behave and the societal fears how a teenager couldbehave, therefore linking the opera’s story to everyday experiences (cf. Walter 2000: 216-219).

The opera begins with a scale on the clarinet and after only three measures Narraboth begins to sing “Wie schön ist die Prinzessin Sa-lome heute nacht” (“How beautiful is the Princess Salomé tonight!”13). The question is whether the curtain is raised before the first measure of music or together with the clarinet’s notes. Since the curtain must be open when Narraboth begins to sing, the curtain needs to be raised before the clarinet’s notes for technical reasons: the time needed to open the curtain is longer than the time required for the three instrumental measures. Salome lacks any musical or technical framing device. The action simply begins without any preparation.

To explain this strange beginning of a very successful opera, it is necessary to look back to the end of the 19th century. At the end of the 19th century, at least in Germany, the idea of opera as part of a Kunst-

religion (art religion) was established. The late Wagner considered the opera house more as a temple of art than as a location of entertainment

13 Quoted from Douglas 1894.

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(this does not necessarily imply that the audience agreed with this notion). The entering of this temple had the function of a framing the opera. There was, however, a problem: after a while temples can become boring because what happens in them is a foreseeable ritual, and in fact it seems that the attendance of works by Wagner as well as of works by the great geniuses Schiller and Goethe turned too much into an educational ritual for the German bourgeoisie (see Walter forthcoming). As the function of an opera house was by no means to be a location for rituals, a gap developed between the expectations of the spectators, who wished to be entertained, and the German composers, who tried to follow in Wagner’s steps. As a result, the works of these composers were, on the whole, not successful.

The situation changed with the upcoming operas of verismo and the operas of Richard Strauss (cf. Walter forthcoming; Walter 2000: 196-201; Walter 2003). The clarinet scale in Salome is already part of the action: all of a sudden it introduces the sultry exotic atmosphere of the opera. It might be that the audience entered a temple of art, but once having entered this temple it suddenly had to experience not only a missing overture but also a missing sublimation of the opera’s beginning. The preludes and programmatic overtures had, as part of an opera, the function of introducing the dramatic action. One can describe these preludes as thresholds preparing for the opera’s content. In contrast to that, Strauss’ opera begins without this threshold and jumps directly into the drama – a drama with dangerous implications in the minds of a Wilhelmian audience, because it is an erotic one. The very first words of the tenor, “How beautiful is the Princess Salomé tonight!”, are obviously not meant to praise an antique ideal of beauty, but to openly praise the erotic or even sexual beauty of Salome, as the remark of the page makes sufficiently clear: “You look at her too much. It is dangerous to look at people in such fashion.”

As opposed to Gluck, Strauss did not follow an aesthetic ideology. What he was looking for was simply the effect on the audience, the proverbial épater les bourgeois. Whereas Gluck in a certain sense


wanted to educate the audience in order to raise the opera house to a temple of art (and was praised by Wagner for that), Strauss did exactly the opposite and undermined these temples of art. He counted on the fact that the opera house itself served as a frame for performances. Yet, Strauss contradicts this institutional frame with the abrupt begin-ning of Salome. In doing so he denies, to a certain degree, the audi-ence the distinction between everyday life and the dramatic life on stage despite the exotic subject of the opera: Salome is, after all, an opera about a young woman who insists on satisfying her own wishes and desires. And in this regard Salome was a sister to all those femmes

fatales doing likewise at the beginning of the 20th century (see Walter 2000: 216-220).

The suppression of the overture must have contributed to an in-crease in feeling for the audience, similar to being in a zoo in front of the tigers whilst the fence between the tigers and the spectators is missing. Indeed, one critic of the first performance of Salome wrote of the awakening of Salome’s tigress nature (cf. Geissler 1905/1906: 57).

As mentioned before, the intention of these short observations on the overture was not to provide an exhaustive theory of the overture and its function as a framing. The three examples were only meant to show some very different kinds of overtures or opera beginnings. On the whole, one can observe that in the 18th and 19th centuries and even at the beginning of the 20th century the preferred function of the overture as a framing for the opera was that of a threshold to the aesthetic realm of the opera itself. The overtures remained more or less independent of the operas, thus forming a bridge from everyday life to the dramatic life of the operatic drama and its fictitious world. However, listening to the overture was not the only transitional phase for the audience. There was also the entering of the opera house, which could also serve as a framing to the performance. There was the raising of the curtain, not employed before the 19th century and the dimming of the lights, not employed before the 20th century. There were several strata of audiences in different opera houses to cope with,

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there were the ideological or aesthetic convictions of the spectators, there were even very different acoustic environments in opera houses (for example, the acoustic conditions in the boxes of the main opera houses in Italy must have been poor [cf. Forsyth 1985: 100]). All of these components together formed framings for the overture itself and influenced its musical form and its function.

References

Borchmeyer, Dieter, ed. (1983). Richard Wagner: Dichtungen und Schriften. Jubiläumsausgabe in zehn Bänden. Vol. 5: Frühe Prosa und Revolutionstraktate. Frankfurt am Main: Insel.

—, ed. (1983a). Richard Wagner: Dichtungen und Schriften. Jubi-läumsausgabe in zehn Bänden. Vol. 7: Oper und Drama. Frankfurt am Main: Insel.

Botstiber, Hugo (1913). Geschichte der Ouvertüre und der freien Or-chesterformen. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel.

Brown, Bruce Alan (1991). Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Budden, Julian (1992). The Operas of Verdi. Vol. 1: From “Oberto” to “Rigoletto”. Oxford/New York, NY: Clarendon Press (revised edition).

Croll, Gerhard, Winton Dean (1980). “Gluck, Christoph Willibald”. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Muicians. Ed. Stanley Sadie. Vol. 7. London: Macmillan. 455-475.

Douglas, Alfred Bruce, Lord (1894). Salome. A Tragedy in One Act: Translated from the French of Oscar Wilde: Pictured by Aubrey Beardsley. London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane/Boston, MA: Copeland & Day.

Einstein, Alfred [n.d., ca. 1954]. Gluck: Sein Leben, seine Werke. Zurich/Stuttgart: Pan-Verlag.

Forsyth, Michael (1985). Buildings for Music: the Architect, the Mu-sician, and the Listener from the Seventeenth Century to Present Day. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Fubini, Enrico (1997). Geschichte der Musikästhetik: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Stuttgart: Metzler.

Geissler, F. A. (1905/1906). “Salome von Richard Strauss. Urauf-führung im Kgl. Opernhaus zu Dresden am 9. Dezember 1905”. Die Musik 5: 56-58.


Henze-Döhring, Sabine (1987). “Alceste / Alceste. Tragedia in musica in tre atti / Tragédie-opéra en trois actes”. Pipers Enzyklopädie des Musiktheaters: Oper, Operette, Musical, Ballett. Eds. Carl Dahl-haus and Forschungsinstitut für Musiktheater der Universität Bay-reuth, directed by Sieghart Döhring. Vol. 2: Werke: Donizetti – Henze. Munich/Zürich: Piper. 442-448.

Howard, Patricia (1995). Gluck: An Eighteenth-Century Portrait in Letters and Documents. Oxford: OUP.

Kimbell, David (1991). Italian Opera. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Leopold, Silke (1988). “Zur Uraufführung der Favola d’Orfeo in

Mantua”. Attila Csampai, Dietmar Holland, eds. Claudio Monte-verdi “Orfeo”/Christoph Willibald Gluck “Orpheus und Eury-dike”: Texte, Materialien, Kommentare. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. 110-111.

Osthoff, Wolfgang (1991). “L’Orfeo. Favola in musica”. Pipers En-zyklopädie des Musiktheaters: Oper, Operette, Musical, Ballett. Eds. Carl Dahlhaus and Forschungsinstitut für Musiktheater der Universität Bayreuth, directed by Sieghart Döhring. Vol. 4: Werke: Massine – Piccini. Munich: Piper. 241-245.

Quantz, Johann Joachim (1752). Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen; mit verschiedenen, zur Beförderung des guten Geschmacks in der Musik dienlichen Anmerkungen. Berlin: Johann Friedrich Voß.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1826). Fragmens d’Observations sur l’Alceste Italien de M. le Chevalier Gluck. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Oeuvres complètes de J. J. Rousseau avec les notes des tous les commentateurs. Nouvelle édition [...]. Musique et Botanique. Paris: Dalibon. Vol. 14. 131-157. (Originally published in 1778).

— (1826a). “Ouverture”. In: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Oeuvres com-plètes de J. J. Rousseau avec les notes des tous les commentateurs. Nouvelle édition [...]. Dictionnaire de musique. Paris: Dalibon. Vol. 13. 144-147. (Originally published in 1768).

Strohm, Reinhard (1985). “Gedanken zu Wagners Opernouvertüren”. Carl Dahlhaus, Egon Voss, eds. Wagnerliteratur – Wagnerfor-schung: Bericht über das Wagner-Symposium München 1983. Mainz: Schott. 69-84.

Schreiber, Ulrich (1988). Opernführer für Fortgeschrittene: Eine Ge-schichte des Musiktheaters. Von den Anfängen bis zur französi-schen Revolution. Kassel: Bärenreiter.

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Tomlinson, Gary (1986). “Italian Romanticism and Italian Opera: An Essay in Their Affinities”. 19th-Century Music 10: 43-60.

Wagner, Richard (1840/1841). Über die Ouvertüre. Borchmeyer, ed. 1983: 194-207.

— (1850/1851). Oper und Drama. Borchmeyer, ed. 1983a: 9-375. Walter, Michael (2000). Richard Strauss und seine Zeit. Laaber: Laa-

ber. — (2000a). “Gesang als höfische Rollen-Vernunft: Kastraten in der

opera seria”. Historische Anthropologie 8: 208-235. — (2003). “Die veristischen Prototypen: Marktstrategien, ‘rustikale

Exotik’ und der Reiz des Unmittelbaren”. Hans-Peter Bayerdörfer, Eckhardt Hellmuth, eds. Exotica: Konsum und Inszenierung des Fremden im 19. Jahrhundert. Kulturgeschichtliche Perspektiven 1. Münster: Lit Verlag. 175-191.

— (forthcoming). “National, sittlich und bildend? Erwartungen an das deutsche Libretto im Kaiserreich”. Anselm Gerhard, ed. Bericht über die Tagung “Joseph Viktor Widmann und das deutschspra-chige Opernlibretto nach Wagner”, Bern, 11. bis 13. November 1999.

Narrative Framing in Schumann’s Piano Pieces

Walter Bernhart

Schumann’s early piano pieces demonstrate that he – in his own view – was a ‘lit-erary’ composer, a qualification which shows, among others, in the fact that quite a number of these works suggest a narrative condition and that some of those have a structure identifiable as a narrative framing. The criteria applied in this essay to analyse cases of narrative framing are a ‘telling voice’ (or ‘narrative flow’) in initial position in the work, and ‘double-voicing’, which implies that two distinct levels of presentation can be observed that function as an extradiegetic ‘framing’ part and a ‘framed’ story part of the piece. The ‘telling voice’ iconically suggests the speech articulation of a person telling a story, and ‘double-voicing’ is suggested by the presence of marked textural contrasts in the music. A variety of examples is given showing a wide spectrum of kinds of framing – not only narrative – to be detected in Schumann’s piano music, and some theoretical considerations placing the findings in the research context round off the discussion.

There are only three papers read at this conference that are concerned with music, which can be taken as an indication that framing, as a physical textual device, is a phenomenon that is rarely associated with music and seems used in music only in a restricted way. The fact that this paper announces to discuss “Narrative Framing” indicates a further restriction, as this implies that music will, additionally, be con-sidered as a medium that is capable of narrative – which is again no undisputed quality of music. Thus, what follows moves into more or less unexplored territory. Some theoretical implications of this situation will be discussed later, what ought to be done first – to round off these cautionary introductory remarks – is to justify the choice of Schumann as a practitioner of ‘narrative framing’.

Robert Schumann is a composer whose first 23 works (written be-tween 1830 and 1840) were exclusively piano pieces. These early piano pieces, from the very beginning, were considered to be excep-tional and breaking new ground – particularly Papillons, op. 2 (1831)

450 Walter Bernhart

– in that they irritated Schumann’s audiences by their fragmented character and their lack of consistency with traditional musical forms (cf. Daverio 1997: 87). It was Schumann himself – a highly ‘literate’ son of a successful book dealer – who emphasized the literary dimen-sion of his music and, for instance, has puzzled critics up to this day about the link he claimed to exist between his own Papillons and Jean Paul’s novel Flege1jahre (cf. ibid.: 79-93; Reiman 2004: 37-47; Dietel 1989: 176-196). Schumann’s admiration for Jean Paul made him want to write a novel himself and consider the novel as a guiding model for musical construction (cf. Dietel 1989: 33). For Schumann, his Papillons were ‘figures and speaking characters’1, and there is ample evidence of terms related to telling or narration in titles of his works.

These observations seem to offer enough external evidence to claim Schumann as a ‘narrative’ composer, but we should not fall too easily into a trap. When Friedrich Ludwig Rellstab, the authoritative founding father of literary music criticism, criticized Schumann’s Kinderszenen, op. 15 (1838) for being ‘fragmented’2 and unmusical because of the titles that were given to the individual pieces (most notoriously “Träumerei”), Schumann famously defended himself against this verdict by saying – and he expressed himself similarly on many occasions – that “I’ve underlaid the text to the music, and not the reverse – otherwise it would be a ‘foolish beginning’” (qtd. Daverio 1997: 83); or, similarly: “The inscriptions for all my compo-sitions only come to me after the composition is complete.” (Qtd. ibid.: 84) His titles are ‘nothing but subtle indications for execution and mental conception’3, and ‘in no case a specific content is fixed or

1 “Gestalten und redende Charaktere” (qtd. Dietel 1989: 35).

2 “[...] zerbröckelt” (qtd. Draheim 1996: 60).

3 “[...] nichts weiter als feinere Fingerzeige für Vortrag und Auffassung” (qtd. Die-tel 1989: 206).

Narrative Framing in Schumann’s Piano Pieces 451

character and origin of the music is determined’4. Schumann insisted that his music reflected “Seelenzustände” (“‘soul states’”), not “Le-benszustände” (“‘external events’”, qtd. ibid.: 85).

The obviously complex relationship of music and literature that can be found in Schumann’s piano music is neatly summarized by John Daverio when he says:

Schumann was arguably the first composer to view his musical creations [...] as literary products. This means neither that music should ‘tell stories’ nor that it must depend on literary models.

Yet it was Schumann’s view that “music should aspire to the same intellectual substance as the ‘lettered’ arts: poetry and philosophy” (ibid.: 89).

Consequently, as far as a possible narrative quality of Schumann’s music is concerned, we are more or less back at the beginning and need to accept that his works, in general, are not ‘literary’ or ‘narra-tive’ in any narrow, specific sense – as we know it, e.g., from fictional writing – but that they are intentionally ‘poetic’ and ‘philosophical’, which nonetheless implies that they contain essential non-musical and, for that matter, ‘literary’ qualities in a wider sense. What can be further claimed is that some of them – and not so few, in fact – show elements of narrativity in a more specific sense, and that among those works which can be read in narrative terms we even find interesting cases that can be interpreted as containing ‘narrative framing’.

I need to define the criteria by which I claim to identify forms of narrativity in Schumann’s piano music, i.e., to name the “narratemes”5

that can be applied to these works. I will at this point discuss them very briefly and leave it to a later discussion to place them in a theoretical context, in particular relating them to narrative criteria as defined by Werner Wolf (cf. 2002: 85f.).

4 “Keineswegs wird [...] ein Inhalt bestimmt oder Wesen und Ursprung der jeweili-gen Musik determiniert.” (Qtd. ibid.: 206)

5 ‘Narratemes’ are those “intracompositional factors that render texts and artefacts narratives and determine their degree of narrativity” (Wolf 2004: 87).

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With Jean-Jacques Nattiez I see the need of what he calls a “nar-rative impulse” (1990: 257) on the side of the recipient to ‘read’ music as being ‘narrative’. In Schumann’s case, such a reception-dependent narrative impulse, or narrative stance, is above all favoured by the frequent titles which he gave to his works and which clearly refer to narrative situations: e.g., in Kinderszenen, “From Foreign Lands and People”, “At the Fireside”, “Strange Story”6, or, elsewhere, “Romanze”, “Fabel”, and so on. Such paratextual references naturally establish a narrative impulse or stance in the listener, but we should keep in mind that all these titles were given only after the composi-tion. So there must have been internal factors and inherent qualities in the music itself that suggested such ‘narrative’ titles even to Schu-mann himself after composition.

A narrateme that can frequently be found in this music is what

shall be called a ‘telling voice’ (Erzählstimme) or ‘narrative flow’ (Erzählduktus). These terms imply that the texture and articulation of the music appear in such a shape that its flow resembles that of the speaking voice of someone telling something. If we look, e.g., at the opening phrases of “At the Fireside” (Fig. 1):

Fig. 1: “Am Kamin”

or of “Hark! The Poet speaks” (Fig. 2):

6 “Von fremden Ländern und Menschen”; “Am Kamin”; “Kuriose Geschichte”.


Fig. 2: “Der Dichter spricht”

this is what we find: a soft, low voice, a moderate tempo, a melodic line of predominantly small intervals imitating a relaxed speech in-flexion, a phrasing that follows natural breathing and pausing. It is interesting to note that the tone which is established by such a ‘narra-tive flow’ and the atmosphere which it creates resemble the “narrative scene” that can typically be found in literary frame-stories, as de-scribed by Jeffrey Williams: a mood suggestive of leisure, warmth, intimacy and gentle anticipation, the “primal scene” of sitting “round the hearth” (Williams 1998: 110-112) – ‘At the Fireside’. It is charac-teristic of Schumann that we find this form of a ‘telling voice’ or ‘nar-rative flow’ evoking a scene of story-telling also in pieces which have no respective title but are still unmistakably suggestive of ‘narrative’, e.g., Nr. 4 of Bilder aus Osten7 (Fig. 3):

Fig. 3: Bilder aus Osten, Nr. 4

7 “Impressions of the East”.

454 Walter Bernhart

It is equally characteristic that in a piece whose title would make one expect such a ‘telling voice’, like in “Strange Story” (Fig. 4), one cannot find it: this opening suggests a dance, maybe a mazurka.

Fig. 4: “Kuriose Geschichte”

A second narrateme active in Schumann’s piano music, in addition to a ‘telling voice’ or ‘narrative flow’ – and this brings us closer to the

issue of framing –, is the existence of what can be called ‘double-voicing’. ‘Double-voicing’ implies the presence of two distinct dis-course levels in the work: in such pieces there is no unified and single “world invoked” but the impression is given of a “heterogeneous jux-taposition” of more than one world (Micznik 2001: 218). Several critics have defined a “presence of conflict” (ibid.: 220) or “disruptive processes” (Kramer 1990: 189) as indicative of narrativity in music. Such a narrative contrastive double structure is seen as replacing uni-fied “formal schemata” (Micznik 2001: 196) as the organizing princi-ple of the music. In Schumann we frequently observe such an “avoid-ance of straightforward, monological discourse” (ibid.: 248), and a heterogeneity of musical discourse of this kind contributes to the im-pression of fragmentation which has often been observed in Schu-mann, as noticed before. The ‘double-voicing’ here addressed is a special case of such discursive fragmentation in that, instead of an apparently unorganized, loose sequence of fragmented and disparate elements, we find two clearly separate discourse levels which are identified as two distinct levels of discourse by their contrastive con-figurations.


Thus, by way of summary, the condition which – in a perceptive listener who follows a ‘narrative impulse’ – evokes the impression of ‘narrative framing’ can be defined in the following terms: on the one hand, the music needs to manifest a situation of ‘double voicing’, with two contrastive levels of discourse in the form here described; and, on the other hand, the one level placed in initial position needs to be characterized by what has been described as a ‘narrative flow’ or ‘telling voice’. Thereby a higher, extradiegetic framing level is being suggested, and the following contrastive part suggests the framed ‘narrative proper’, the level of the ‘story told’.

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Fig. 5: “Fabel” (beginning)

Fig. 6: “Fabel” (end)

Such a typical situation of narrative framing can be found, for exam-ple, in Schumann’s “Fabel” from Fantasiestücke, op. 12 (1837) (Figs. 5 & 6). It is difficult to avoid reading this piano piece as a frame-story. The beginning clearly sets a narrative gesture in a leisurely ‘telling voice’ announcing a story (the melody may very well be sung to words like “Listen, hear me tell a story now”), and the following part shows a strongly contrastive texture using excited, fast staccati. The frame returns internally in an extended version, like an intrusion, after


eight bars and, completing the frame, reappears terminally at the end of the piece, as a placid comment on the dramatic ‘story’ that has been ‘told’ – two and a half pages long – in the main part of the work. It is an evident point to make that nothing definite can be said about a possible content of this ‘story’; following Schumann, no ‘external states’ (“Lebenszustände”) are mirrored in his music. But what we do have is the outline shape, the morphology of a story (“‘Hohlform’”, in Wolf’s terms; 2002: 97). To be true, the title of the piece suggests that a story is being told, and this will establish a narrative impulse in the receptive listener. But as the title came later, it may very well be con-jectured that Schumann – considering his literary inclinations – had the outline of a frame-story situation in his mind, as a formal motiva-tion for his composition, when he wrote this work.

458 Walter Bernhart


Fig. 7: “Romanze”

A case similar to “Fabel” is “Romanze” from Albumblätter, op. 124,

composed in 1835 (Fig. 7). Again a short, leisurely two-bar phrase in a ‘telling voice’ opens the piece, announcing a ‘narrative’, and returns verbatim at the end, as a thoughtful reflection on what has been ‘told’. In between there is an embedded ‘narrative proper’ in A B A form (slow – fast – slow) that may be seen as telling a ‘romance’, as the title suggests – again obviously only showing the morphology of a story.

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Fig. 8: “Fürchtenmachen”

An interesting case is “Fürchtenmachen” from Kinderszenen (Fig. 8).Again there is a strong contrast between two musical textures that suggests ‘double-voicing’, and as the initial voice shows a ‘narrative flow’, again a framing situation is suggested. The title was most likely stimulated by the second, the ‘framed’ voice, which is in strong con-trast to the first and suggests a fleeting, uncanny appearance that might scare a child. Such uncanny appearances return twice again, with the first voice interrupting each time, maybe soothingly, to gain dominance at the end. In contrast to the two ‘frame-stories’ of “Fabel” and “Romanze”, here the first voice is the more extensive part, which may imply that the first voice is not only announcing a story but is telling (part of) a story itself, i.e., it may very well be seen as forming part of the ‘narrative proper’. With such a reading, there would be no frame at all, and it would be a case of ‘narrative’, but not of ‘narrative framing’.

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Fig. 9: Papillons, No. 6

Structurally comparable to “Fürchtenmachen” is No. 6 of Papillons

(Fig. 9). Yet here the initial part, the first voice, shows no ‘narrative flow’ but a fast-moving, agitated texture in a minor key. This first voice returns in the middle of the piece and also forms its end, thus establishing a genuine framing situation, surrounding two contrastive sections of clearly different musical texture, both slower, calmer and in major keys. In this case, the two voices again appear as parts of one single discourse, in a paratactical construction, yet without a narrative introduction. Thus, here, in contrast to “Fürchtenmachen”, we can observe a framing situation, yet it is not a case of ‘narrative framing’, comparable to a literary frame-story, because the distinction between a higher, extradiegetic framing level and a lower, framed ‘story’ level is missing.

Two similar cases are “Abendmusik” (“Evening Music”) from Bunte Blätter, op. 99 (1841), and – particularly intriguing – “Vision” from Albumblätter, op. 124 (1838).

[...]

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Fig. 10: “Abendmusik” (beginning and end)

“Abendmusik” (Fig. 10) may not be the most successful Schumann piece but, from the viewpoint of our subject, shows an interesting frame. The whole work is in tempo di minuetto, but the opening phrase sounds more like a sombre march played by low brass instru-ments followed by a ‘narrative flow’ of celli and double-basses to lead on to the actual dance music. The same phrase reappears at the end, followed by a reminiscence of the dance music to round off the piece. This sequence of ‘events’ reminds one of Weber’s “Aufforderung zum Tanz” (“Invitation to the Dance”), yet its title, “Abendmusik” (“Evening Music”) reminds one more of a Biedermeier-Hauskonzert

with dance music than an actual dancing event as in Weber’s piece. This is also what the fairly sombre style of the opening and ending suggests – a rather dull evening. Whether the ‘double-voicing’, with the low-strings ‘narrative flow’, really suggests an extradiegetic first voice and thus a true narrative frame, or whether the opening passage is part of the ‘narrative proper’, as in Weber’s “Invitation to the Dance”, cannot be clearly said. Yet the existence of a distinctly different voice framing the central part of the piece cannot be questioned.


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Fig. 11: “Vision”

The same is true of “Vision” (Fig. 11). What is exceptional in this case is the fact that the frame consists of a single bar each at the beginning and the end, on a single tone or chord respectively; but it clearly forms a separate voice in the piece. The extremely reduced musical means employed seem sufficient to establish a scene, signalling an expectation that there is something to come and rounding the situation off after something has happened. The second voice is in obvious contrast to the mysterious first voice and opens up an extremely vivid, but very soft, fairy-like world reminiscent of Mendelssohn’s overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream and his frequent fast movements of that style in other works. The title Schumann chose, “Vision”, seems very fitting, and the framing situation suggests the sudden appearance of a spooky fairy world springing up in the imagination of a tranquil, though alert, mind. (Interestingly, Schumann’s discarded his earlier title, “Fata Morgana”, probably because the character of the world evoked does not answer the expectations of a fata morgana.) In “Vision” we again find double-voicing with a frame that establishes a separate level representing an existential sphere which is distinctly different from the evoked ‘vision’ itself. This particular situation cannot be called a ‘narrative framing situation’, as a ‘telling voice’, and therefore a narrative introduction, is missing. The framing condition and the double-voicing found in this piece could more fittingly be called a ‘lyric framing situation’ as the suggested condition resembles that of a meditative mind that, in a (typically Wordsworthian) contemplative, tranquil and receptive mood, imagi-natively evokes a distinctly different, ‘visionary’ world.


All the framing situations discussed so far are “bracketing” or “re-curring” framings, to take up Jeffrey Williams’s terms (1998: 122f.), i.e., in each case we find the reappearance of the frame at the end of the piece and sometimes also, additionally, at places in the middle. Yet a number of Schumann’s piano pieces show only initial framing, without further reappearance of the framing part. Some of these initial framings can be seen as ‘narrative’ as they show a ‘telling voice’ as, e.g., the “Introduzione” to Papillons (Fig. 12):

Fig. 12: Papillons, “Introduzione”

Some pieces, like, e.g., Papillons, No. 11 (Fig. 13), have neither dou-ble-voicing nor a telling voice but open with a separate phrase which, however, performs a mere announcing function like a flourish in preparation for the polonaise to start:

468 Walter Bernhart


In Papillons, No. 9, “Prestissimo” (Fig. 14), we find an opening sec-tion that is strongly contrastive to the rest of the piece but, like in No. 11, shows no telling voice. Yet in this case it has no mere announcing function and appears to be part of the main discourse of the work:



470 Walter Bernhart


Similarly, in Papillons, No. 10 (Fig. 15), we find even two introduc-tory sections – in themselves strongly contrastive – which give way to the much longer main part of the piece, a spacious waltz. What is interesting in this case is a sudden interruption of the waltz – strongly contrastive in texture – towards the end of the piece (bars 10 to 14 from the end, in ff): we definitely hear another voice, and its musical material is clearly reminiscent of the opening of the piece. So this is a case of ‘internal framing’. It is a structure like this that brought Schu-mann’s early piano works – as mentioned before – the criticism of being “zerbröckelt” (‘crumbled’ or ‘fragmented’). Such a structure is paratactical with no implication of a narrative hierarchy of voices, but


the sequence of parts suggests a framing situation rather than a mere medley, as many contemporary listeners were inclined to see it.

To characterize, by way of summary, the use of framing in some of Schumann’s piano pieces, I take my departure from Jeffrey Williams’s helpful considerations (cf. 1998). It is Williams’s central concern to define the various functions of literary framings in relation to the framed stories, and it is one of his aims to show that they form part of the self-reflexive stratagems of literary narratives (cf. ibid.: 102). In so doing he distances himself from positions that give a mere marginal position to framing borders and see them as only “ancillary” and “extraneous” “appetizers” (ibid.: 4), as a mere “ornament or façade on a building”, “supplemental”, “negligible”, “arbitrary” and “non-necessary” (ibid.: 104). The function that Derrida attributes to a picture frame as a “parergon” (1987: 144), as a “bastard” element (Williams 1998: 104) that is “neither work nor outside-the-work” (Derrida 1987: 122), is not appropriately attributed to literary fram-ings – according to Williams – because literary frames are far more intimately linked to the embedded story – with self-reflexive purposes – than picture frames are8.

Looking at framings in music, as I have done with Schumann’s pi-ano pieces, one can assert that they are equally never merely ‘supple-mental’ or ‘ornamental’ ‘parerga’ but always integral parts of the works themselves that cannot be cut off or left out without seriously damaging the work. This is true even for the brief prologue framings of a purely introductory nature which we have seen (e.g., Papillons, “Introduzione”, Fig. 12, or No. 11, Fig. 13). In this respect musical framings are, of course, far nearer to framings in narrative fiction than in traditional paintings. Yet their link to the ‘framed text’ is in all cases more intimate than in typical literary frame-stories as it is more

8 Such an assessment is true for what Wolf refers to as “intratextual framings”; of course it does not apply to “extratextual framings” such as title pages, prefaces etc. (see Wolf’s “Introduction” to this volume).

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difficult in music to establish unequivocally two distinct voices of presentation, which is a necessary prerequisite for the experience of framing in temporal media. We said at the beginning that it takes a narrative impulse or stance to become aware of such double-voicing in music, and as we went along we found musical conditions that encourage the identification of double-voicing, mainly conditions of textural contrast and disruption. Of course, the ultimate ontological reason for the necessarily integral status of framings in the musical works they are part of, lies in the fact that music essentially lacks external referentiality. This is also the reason why the presence of two voices is unequivocally identifiable only in musical works which in-troduce obvious external references, as for example in Schumann’s Faschingsschwank aus Wien (Carnival Drollery from Vienna), op. 26 (1841), No. 1 (“Allegro”), where the Marseillaise is quoted9.

The topic of external referentiality brings me to my concluding remarks and the promised attempt of placing my findings in the framework of musical narratology.

Werner Wolf, in his magisterial contribution to establishing an in-termedial narratology (cf. 2002), is basically sceptical of musical nar-rativity and accepts only a ‘quasi-narrative’ status of music. He grounds his verdict on the premise that ‘every discourse that is sup-posed to stand in the service of narration, in order to fulfil the basic presentational qualities of narrative, must be capable of precise hetero-referentiality, i.e., of reference beyond the respective work and its medium’10. On such a rigid premise – and that of music’s essential external non-referentiality – it is rather unexpected that musical narra-tivity, in actual fact, gets so much benevolent treatment in Wolf’s study. He even gives a list of seven internal musical conditions or 9 This, however, is no case of framing but a digression, to take up Williams’s meaningful distinction (cf. 1998: 107).

10 “Jeder Diskurs, der im Dienst des Narrativen stehen soll, muß zur Erfüllung der basalen Darstellungsqualität des Erzählens zu präziser Heteroreferenz, d. h. zu einer Referenz jenseits des betreffenden Werkes und seines Mediums, befähigt sein”. (Wolf 2002: 77)


‘stimuli’, that encourage a narrative reading of music (cf. 2002: 85f.). This list summarizes succinctly what earlier research has brought forth and adds some new insights. In the following I slightly revise and extend this list in the light of the findings of this essay. I can here discuss only those additional points.

Wolf’s first-mentioned stimulus is ‘a not too small length of the composition’ in order to give enough space for ‘temporal experience’, which is ‘typically suggested by narrative’11. This observation obvi-ously reflects the experience of Mahlerian symphonies and their kin-ship to 19th-century novel writing (see Micznik’s careful analysis of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, 2001: passim). Schumann’s piano pieces, however, have shown that length is no indispensable prerequisite for suggested musical narrativity and that even short pieces can evoke narrative conditions.

A further stimulus of musical narrativity, following Wolf, is the ability of musical structures to evoke the ‘projection of characters’, among others by ‘recitative-like or tuneful melodies reminiscent of human voices’12. Such melodic structures may very well remind us of human voices, but a ‘recitative-like’ style of singing usually evokes a dramatic, rather than a narrative condition, and a ‘tuneful’ song a lyric one. The evocation of human voices and characters, as such, does not eo ipso establish the impression of narrative, and it takes a particular configuration of dynamic, agogic and melodic features, as discussed, to suggest a ‘telling’ voice. Yet in conjunction with other stimuli such an evocation may contribute to a suggestion of musical narrativity.

The issue of ‘voice’ is taken up again on Wolf’s list when he refers to Carolyn Abbate’s discussion of a “narrating” or “narrative voice” as

11 “[...] ein nicht zu kleiner Umfang der Komposition [...], denn erst eine gewisse Länge würde die erzähltypische Suggestion zeitlicher Erfahrung auslösen können” (ibid: 85).

12 “Bereitstellung von Strukturen [...], welche die Projektion von Figuren gestatten”, z. B. durch “rezitativähnliche oder sangliche und daher an eine menschliche Stimme erinnernde Melodieführung” (ibid.: 85f.).

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a stimulus for musical narrativity13. Abbate sees a “narrative voice”

related to “imitation of singing” (1991: 19), but “imitation of singing”alone is, again, not sufficient to suggest a ‘narrating voice’; narration is only one form of applying a voice. Abbate’s investigations follow-ing up the idea of a narrating voice concentrate on opera and pro-gramme music but do not address themselves more specifically to the particular style of singing that suggests the speaking voice of someone telling a story (what I call a ‘telling voice’). Here a terminological clarification is in place: I avoid using the terms ‘narrative voice’ or ‘narrating voice’ for what I call ‘telling voice’ because the term ‘voice’ has two distinct connotations: ‘voice’ in ‘narrative voice’ implies reference to a narrative persona, i.e., the presentational in-

stance or agency of a work, while ‘voice’ in ‘telling voice’ refers to the speaking voice as the performative instrument of auditory articula-tion. (This observation implies that while Wolf restricts his discussion of musical narrativity to the ‘story’ level I introduce a further aspect of musical narrativity which is situated on the ‘discourse’ level.)

The notion of ‘double-voicing’ (and here ‘voice’ refers to presen-tational instances) as discussed in this paper does not feature in Wolf’s list of stimuli, other than by implication. The list talks about ‘contrast relations’ and ‘unexpected developments’ in music14, which we have observed as important preconditions for the experience of double-voicing. Wolf also refers to ‘musical harmony and forms’ as bases for such contrasts to be perceived as ‘elements of narrative de-velopment’15. One could name any further elements of musical texture and articulation, like dynamics, agogics, rhythm etc. – in addition to harmony and forms – that are capable of contributing to contrastive

13 Abbate 1991: 19 and passim; see Wolf 2002: 86.

14 “Kontrastrelationen”; “überraschende[...] Unvorhersehbarkeit der musikalischen Entwicklung” (Wolf 2002: 85).

15 “[...] die Anwendung einer musikalischen Harmonik und Formenlehre, vor deren Hintergrund z. B. Kontraste, Erwartungen, Spannungen und Lösungen als Elemente erzählerischer Entwicklung überhaupt erst wahrnehmbar werden” (ibid.: 86).


situations. The conclusion that such contrastive situations in musical developments may mirror contrastive voices, or levels, of the musical discourse can easily be drawn: I have tried to demonstrate that con-trastive voices of this kind can in some cases even be interpreted in terms of a narrative hierarchy between an extradiegetical narrative voice and an embedded narrative voice, which condition establishes a genuine narrative framing situation. True, such situations are not ex-tremely frequent in music but they naturally belong to the strategies of the kind of ‘literary’ music that Schumann and others of his cultural background had in mind. Narratologists may be reluctant to accept the existence of such two voices in music because they are used to asso-ciating with the two narrative levels two distinct worlds of experience, which – because of its lack of external reference – cannot un-equivocally be established in music. We may identify such a distinc-tion, however, if we do not expect actual worlds to be presented and actual stories to be told in music, but are prepared to experience the structural morphology of stories. And such an experience of narrative morphology may be triggered and suggested by an initial ‘telling voice’ in the music. The foregoing discussion of framing situations in Schumann has left out of consideration whether the ‘embedded text’ following the initial framing actually suggests being ‘narrative’. What is essential in the given context is the fact that the initial ‘telling voice’ sets an expectation of a narrative to follow, irrespective of whether this expectation is actually met or not.

A ‘telling voice’, by imitating the speech of someone telling, or announcing to tell, a story, introduces an element of external reference into the music and is, thus, an iconic device – and, in fact, a typical iconic device in music as it represents a performative and gestural feature. To sum up: the genuinely musical device of an iconic gestural ‘telling voice’ in music may trigger in the listener a narrative impulse and, in combination with contrastive situations in the musical development, is able to suggest the presence of two separate narrative voices or levels that may establish a narrative framing situation.

476 Walter Bernhart

Without identifying such ‘narrative’ conditions in Schumann’s piano pieces we clearly reduce the intellectual pleasure and aesthetic satis-faction that Schumann meant to stimulate in his audience.

References

Abbate, Carolyn (1991). Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narra-tive in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.

Daverio, John (1997). Robert Schumann: Herald of a ‘New ‘Poetic Age’. New York/Oxford: OUP.

Derrida, Jacques (1987). The Truth of Painting. Trans. Geoff Ben-nington, Ian McLeod. Chicago, IL: Chicago Univ. Press.

Dietel, Gerhard (1989). ‘Eine neue poetische Zeit’: Musikanschauung und stilistische Tendenzen im Klavierwerk Robert Schumanns. Kassel et al.: Bärenreiter.

Draheim, Joachim (1996). “Schumanns Kinderszenen op. 15: Offene Fragen, neue Antworten, unbekannte Materialien”. Gerd Nauhaus, ed. Schumann-Studien 5. Cologne: Studio. 55-64.

Kramer, Lawrence (1990). Music as Cultural Practice 1800-1900. Berkeley, CA/London: Univ. of California Press.

Micznik, Vera (2001). “Music and Narrative Revisited: Degrees of Narrativity in Beethoven and Mahler”. Journal of the Royal Musi-cal Association 126: 193-249.

Nattiez, Jean-Jacques (1990). “Can One Speak of Narrativity in Mu-sic?”. Katherine Ellis, ed. Journal of the Royal Musical Associa-tion 115: 240-257.

Reiman, Erika (2004). Schumann’s Piano Cycles and the Novels of Jean Paul. Rochester, NY: Univ. of Rochester Press.

Williams, Jeffrey (1998). Theory and the Novel: Narrative Reflexivity in the British Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Wolf, Werner (2002). “Das Problem der Narrativität in Literatur, bildender Kunst und Musik: Ein Beitrag zu einer intermedialen Erzähltheorie”. Vera Nünning, Ansgar Nünning, eds. Erzähltheorie transgenerisch, intermedial, interdisziplinär. Trier: Wissen-schaftlicher Verlag. 23-104.

— (2004). “‘Cross the Border – Close that Gap’: Towards an Inter-medial Narratology”. European Journal of English Studies 8/1: 81-103.

Notes on Contributors

Patricia Allmer ([email protected]) has recently completed her PhD on René Magritte at Loughborough University, where she is currently teaching. She is guest-editing a special issue on Belgian Sur-realism for the online journal Image and Narrative and is co-editing, with Hilde van Gelder, a collection on Belgian Surrealism. She has a forthcoming chapter on ‘exquisite corpses’, co-authored with John Sears, in a collection for the University of Nebraska Press. She has published articles in journals such as Art History, Scope and Post-Script. In addition, she has organised conferences and several sessions at the Association of Art Historians conference, the next being a ses-sion on Walter Benjamin in 2006. Her research and teaching interests focus on different aspects of modern art, with particular attention to Surrealisms in European contexts. She is interested in theoretical ap-plications to the analysis of art works and has a supplementary interest in film and film theory.

Walter Bernhart ([email protected]) is professor of Eng-lish Literature at the University of Graz, Austria, chairman of the university’s research and teaching programme “Intermediality”, and founding and current president of the International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA). His main research interests are intermedia studies, word and music studies, theory of the lyric, rhythm studies, Elizabethan and twentieth-century poetry. His numerous publications include ‘True Versifying’: Studien zur elisabethanischen Verspraxis und Kunstideologie (1993); “Überlegungen zur Lyrik-theorie aus erzähltheoretischer Sicht” (1993); “Iconicity and Beyond in ‘Lullaby for Jumbo’: Semiotic Functions of Poetic Rhythm” (1999); “Typologische Überlegungen zum Melodrama” (2000); “The ‘Destructiveness of Music’: Functional Intermedia Disharmony in Popular Songs” (2002). He is editor-in-chief of two book series, Word and Music Studies (WMS) and Studies in Intermediality (SIM).

Vera Beyer ([email protected]) teaches at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. She studied literature, studio arts and art history in Siegen, Vancouver and at the EHESS in Paris. PhD on “Frameworks. Goya’s

478 Notes on Contributors

Position in a History of Frames” at the University of Hamburg and the Graduiertenkolleg (graduate school) “Representation – Rhetoric – Knowledge” in Frankfurt an der Oder in 2005. Specific interests: frames, Goya, contemporary French art theory and Persian book painting. Publications: “Geheimnisse des Glaubens (an Bilder)”. Vera Beyer, Jutta Voorhoeve, Anselm Haverkamp, eds. Das Bild ist der König: Nach Louis Marin. Munich: Fink [forthcoming]; “Bildreste: Womit Goyas Bilder nicht fertig werden”. Christian Spies, Andreas Becker, Saskia Reither, eds. Reste: Umgang mit einem Randphänomen. Biele-feld 2005; “Wenn Bilder sich mit dem Leib Christi vergleichen”. Sascha Jürgens, Lars Niehaus, eds. Vom Himmelskörper zum Men-schenleib. Zurich: Chronos [forthcoming].

Remigius Bunia ([email protected]) holds a degree in German Literature and a degree in Mathematics, both from the University of Bonn, and studied one year at the Sorbonne in Paris. The subject of his doctoral dissertation, which will be completed in 2006, is the rela-tionship between fictionality and narrative phenomena. He was an associate member of the Graduiertenkolleg (graduate school) “Cul-tures of mendacity” at the University of Regensburg and teaches at the Universities of Siegen and Hagen. His writings include articles on narratology and on law in literature.

Till Dembeck ([email protected]) studied German Literature, Phi-losophy and Mathematics at the Universities of Bonn and Freiburg/ Germany. He spent a year as a Fulbright-scholar at the University of Washington, Seattle, and has taught at the Universities of Hagen, Bonn and Gießen. Currently, he is a member of the Graduiertenkolleg (graduate school) „Klassizismus und Romantik“ at the University of Gießen, and works on a dissertation about (paratextual) framing in German Literature at the end of the 18th century, focusing on Wieland, Moritz and Jean Paul. His areas of interest include literary theory, systems theory, German literature of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, and media history (the phonograph in particular).

Anja Grebe ([email protected]) studied art history, history and French literature at the Universities of Constance and Paris (Sorbonne). M.A. in 1995. 1996-1997: research assistant at the University of Constance. 1997-2000: Graduate school “Medieval Writing Culture” at the Uni-

Notes on Contributors 479

versity of Münster. Ph.D. in December 2000 on Page Design in Flem-ish Illuminated Manuscripts after 1470. Since 2001: Research assis-tant at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg. Publications on Flemish book illumination, medieval secular art, furniture and Albrecht Dürer.

Erik Hedling ([email protected]) is professor of Comparative Literature and Associate Dean of Languages and Literature at Lund University, Sweden. He is the author of Lindsay Anderson, Maverick Film-Maker. London: Cassell, 1998, and British Fictions: Intermedial Studies in Film, TV, Drama, Prose, and Poetry. Stockholm: Sym-posion, 2001, as well as of numerous publications. In addition, he is the co-editor of Interart Poetics: Essays on the Interrelations of the Arts and Media. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997, and Cultural Functions of Intermedial Exploration. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002.

Daniel F. Herrmann ([email protected]) is Curator of the Paolozzi Collection at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. He is an art historian educated at the University of Hamburg; his research interests are 20th-century prints and drawings as well as British-German relationships in the visual arts after 1945. He is currently cataloguing the works on paper of Sir Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005).

Born in Ireland, Richard Phelan ([email protected]) teaches American literature and civilization as Professeur agrégé at the Uni-versité de Provence in Aix-en-Provence, France. He is a former fellow of the Terra Academy of American Art, Giverny and Chicago. In 2005, he presented a doctoral thesis on American art at the Université Lumière in Lyon.

Götz Pochat ([email protected]): study of Comparative Lit-erature and History of Art at the University of Stockholm; Assistant and associate Professor 1971-1981; Professor of History of Art – Kunsthistorisches Institut, RWTH Aachen, Germany 1982-1987; Chair at the Institute of Fine Arts at the Karl-Franzens-University Graz since 1987. Major publications: Der Exotismus während des Mittelalters und der Renaissance. Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis – Stockholm Studies in History of Art 21. Stockholm: Almqvist-Wiksell, 1970; Figur und


Landschaft – Eine historische Interpretation der Landschaftsmalerei von der Antike bis zur Renaissance. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter & Co, 1973; Der Symbolbegriff in der Ästhetik und Kunstwis-senschaft. Cologne: DuMont, 1983; Geschichte der Ästhetik und Kunsttheorie – Von der Antike bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. Köln: DuMont, 1986; Theater und bildende Kunst im Mittelalter und in der Renaissance in Italien. Graz: Adeva, 1990; Bild/Zeit: Zeitgestalt und Erzählstruktur in der bildenden Kunst von den Anfängen bis zur frü-hen Neuzeit. Vienna: Böhlau, 1996; Bild/Zeit. Zeitgestalt und Erzähl-struktur in der bildenden Kunst des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts. Vienna: Böhlau, 2004.

Christian Quendler ([email protected]) is research as-sistant and lecturer at the Department of American Studies of the Uni-versity of Innsbruck. His interests are literary and media theory and history of changing functions of literature. He has published a com-parative study on German and English metafiction: From Romantic Irony and Postmodernist Metafiction. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2001. His current research project, which was supported by a doctoral grant from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, examines initial framings in the history of the American novel from the beginnings to modernism.

Margarete Rubik ([email protected]) is professor of English literature at the University of Vienna, Austria. Her main areas of interest are Restoration and 18th-century drama and the Victorian novel, and she has published widely in these fields. Recently, she has developed a research interest in cognitive poetics.Publications: Eva Müller-Zettelmann, Margarete Rubik, eds. Theory into Poetry: New Approaches to the Lyric. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005; Margarete Rubik, Jorge Figueroa-Dorrego, Bernard Dhuicq, eds. Re-visiting and Reinterpreting Aphra Behn: Proceedings of the Aphra Behn Europe Seminar, ESSE Conference, Strasbourg 2002. Entre-vaux: Bilingua GA Editions, 2003; Margarete Rubik, Eva Müller-Zet-telmann, eds. Eighteenth-Century Women Playwrights. Vol. 1: Dela-rivier Manley and Eliza Haywood. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2001; Early Women Dramatists: Women Playwrights in England 1550-1800. London: Macmillan, 1998; The Novels of Mrs. Oliphant:A Subversive View of Traditional Themes. New York: Peter Lang, 1994.

Notes on Contributors 481

Roy Sommer ([email protected]) is professor of English Literature and Culture at the University of Wuppertal/Germany. His publications include a monograph on the Black British novel (Fictions of Migration: Ein Beitrag zu Theorie und Gattungstypologie des zeit-genössischen interkulturellen Romans in Großbritannien. Trier: WVT, 2001) and an introduction to contemporary cultural studies (Grund-kurs Cultural Studies/Kulturwissenschaft. Stuttgart: Klett, 2003). He is the editor of Beyond (Classical) Narratology, a special issue of EJES: European Journal for English Studies (2004), and has co-edited a book on interdisciplinary approaches to cultural and literary theory in Germany (Kulturwissenschaftliche Literaturwissenschaft: Disziplinäre Ansätze – Theoretische Positionen – Transdisziplinäre Perspektiven.Tübingen: Narr 2004, with Ansgar Nünning).

Maria Stefanescu ([email protected]) received BA and MA degrees from Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. She is currently preparing a Ph.D. thesis on the relevance of possible worlds semantics for the study of literature. Since 1999, assistant editor of the literary monthly Discobolul. Assistant lecturer at the University of Alba Iulia., Romania. At present, Romanian lecturer at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland. Published literary reviews and studies on speech-act theory and possible-worlds seman-tics.

Michael Walter ([email protected]) is professor of Musi-cology at the University of Graz/Austria. He has edited and co-edited several books, among them three volumes of the Jahrbuch für Opern-forschung (1985, 1986, 1990) and Text und Musik: Neue Perspektiven der Theorie. Munich: Fink, 1992. He is author of Hitler in der Oper: Deutsches Musikleben 1919-1945. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995/2000, “Die Oper ist ein Irrenhaus”: Sozialgeschichte der Oper im 19. Jahr-hundert. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1997/Tokyo 2000, and Richard Strauss und seine Zeit. Laaber: Laaber, 2000. He has also published numerous articles and book chapters on the music history of the Middle Ages, the history of opera, classical music, Richard Strauss, and music and musical life in the first half of the 20th century.

Haiko Wandhoff ([email protected]) is Privatdozent for Medieval and Early Modern Philology at the Institute of German Literature of Humboldt University, Berlin. His research interests in-


clude high medieval court epic and lyric, word and image, ekphrasis and intermediality, heraldry, printing and literary communication in the sixteenth century, and the theory and history of media. He has published numerous articles on courtly literature and is the author of Der epische Blick: Eine mediengeschichtliche Studie zur höfischen Literatur. Berlin: Schmidt, 1996, and Ekphrasis: Kunstbeschreibun-gen und virtuelle Räume in der Literatur des Mittelalters. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2003.

Werner Wolf ([email protected]) is professor of English and General Literature at the University of Graz/Austria. He is the author of monographs on 18th-century French sensibility (Ursprünge und Formen der Emfindsamkeit im französischen Drama, 1984), aesthetic illusion (Ästhetische Illusion und Illusionsdurchbrechung in der Er-zählkunst, 1993), and intermediality (The Musicalization of Fiction: A Study in the Theory and History of Intermediality, 1999). He has also co-edited three volumes of the series Word and Music Studies (1999, 2001 and 2004) and has published numerous articles on literary the-ory, especially on narrativity, iconicity, self-referentiality, aesthetic illusion, and framing, moreover on the functions of literature, 18th- to 21st-century fiction and drama as well as on intermedial relations be-tween literature and other media, notably music and the visual arts.



Berryman’s Henry Living at the Intersection of Need and Art Samuel Fisher Dodson Amsterdam/New York, NY 2006. XIV, 176 pp. (Costerus NS 158) ISBN: 90-420-1689-2 € 40,- / US $50.- Berryman’s Henry: Living at the Intersection of Need and Art offers scholars and students the first thorough and well-researched vehicle into John Berryman’s epic poem The Dream Songs. Through a close reading of the text, an examination of the history of its criticism and some of Berryman’s letters, notes, and pertinent manuscripts, Sam Dodson offers the reader a solid starting point to appreciate the presiding structure and thematic focus of this American classic. This structure, resulting from the poet’s crafting and the poem’s internal growth, is illustrated in the text by more than thirty reproductions of some of the Dream Song drafts in progress. No existing critical work examines anywhere near the number of individual Dream Songs as this reader’s guide, which will enable students and teachers to enter Berryman’s difficult poem with confidence and a proper sense of direction. Its purpose is to provide the beginning reader and the scholar with a map for approaching this large work and finding their way through its elegiac structure and appreciating its unity. A close look at the poem's language and stylistic innovations, epic qualities and author’s poetics, and most especially the elegiac movement of the poem, will allow even the novice reader to enter Henry’s world. The elegies as a whole provide the note of mourning that is at the core of Berryman’s epic. USA/Canada: 295 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 1B, KENILWORTH, NJ 07033, USA Call toll-free (USA only)1-800-225-3998, Tel. 908 298 9071, Fax 908-298-9075 All other countries: Tijnmuiden 7, 1046 AK Amsterdam, The Netherlands Tel. ++ 31 (0)20 611 48 21, Fax ++ 31 (0)20 447 29 79 [email protected] www.rodopi.nl Please note that the exchange rate is subject to fluctuations

Cyberculture, Cyborgs and Science Fiction Consciousness and the Posthuman William S. Haney II Amsterdam/New York, NY 2006. X, 192 pp. (Consciousness: Literature and the Arts 2) ISBN: 90-420-1948-4 € 40,- / US $50.- Addressing a key issue related to human nature, this book argues that the first-person experience of pure consciousness may soon be under threat from posthuman biotechnology. In exploiting the mind’s capacity for instrumental behavior, posthumanists seek to extend human experience by physically projecting the mind outward through the continuity of thought and the material world, as through telepresence and other forms of prosthetic enhancements. Posthumanism envisions a biology/machine symbiosis that will promote this extension, arguably at the expense of the natural tendency of the mind to move toward pure consciousness. As each chapter of this book contends, by forcibly overextending and thus jeopardizing the neurophysiology of consciousness, the posthuman condition could in the long term undermine human nature, defined as the effortless capacity for transcending the mind’s conceptual content. Presented here for the first time, the essential argument of this book is more than a warning; it gives a direction: far better to practice patience and develop pure consciousness and evolve into a higher human being than to fall prey to the Faustian temptations of biotechnological power. As argued throughout the book, each person must choose for him or herself between the technological extension of physical experience through mind, body and world on the one hand, and the natural powers of human consciousness on the other as a means to realize their ultimate vision. USA/Canada: 295 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 1B, KENILWORTH, NJ 07033, USA Call toll-free (USA only)1-800-225-3998, Tel. 908 298 9071, Fax 908-298-9075 All other countries: Tijnmuiden 7, 1046 AK Amsterdam, The Netherlands Tel. ++ 31 (0)20 611 48 21, Fax ++ 31 (0)20 447 29 79 [email protected] www.rodopi.nl Please note that the exchange rate is subject to fluctuations

Christian Oster et cie Retour du Romanesque Aline Mura-Brunel (dir.) Amsterdam/New York, NY 2006. 139 pp. (Crin 45) ISBN: 90-420-1878-X € 30,-/US$ 38.- A chaque rentrée littéraire, le nombre de romans publiés ne cesse de croître. Et même si tous, loin s’en faut, ne dépassent pas le temps d’une saison, il en est qui demeurent et qui témoignent de la vitalité et de la qualité de la littérature française d’aujourd’hui. Par des analyses d’une extrême densité, les auteurs du présent volume dessinent quelques-uns des aspects du massif romanesque et s’efforcent de dégager ce qui fait retour autant que ce qui profondément change. Sans doute est-ce là une contribution critique majeure à l’exploration d’un domaine en expansion et en perpétuelle transformation. Aline Mura-Brunel, Professeur des Universités, enseigne la littérature française des XIXe, XXe et XXIe siècles à l’Université de Pau. Elle a publié deux essais : Béatrix et la logique des contraires (Champion, coll. Romantisme et Modernités, 1997) et Silences du roman. Balzac et le Romanesque contemporain, (Rodopi, coll. Faux titre, 2004) ; co-dirigé plusieurs ouvrages collectifs et numéros de revues. USA/Canada: 295 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 1B, KENILWORTH, NJ 07033, USA Call toll-free (USA only)1-800-225-3998, Tel. 908 298 9071, Fax 908-298-9075 All other countries: Tijnmuiden 7, 1046 AK Amsterdam, The Netherlands Tel. ++ 31 (0)20 611 48 21, Fax ++ 31 (0)20 447 29 79 [email protected] www.rodopi.nl Please note that the exchange rate is subject to fluctuations

Returning (to) Communities Theory, Culture and Political Practice of the Communal Edited by Stefan Herbrechter and Michael Higgins

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Returning (to) Communities offers an innovative collection of examples and case studies into what has become a hotly disputed topic. The chapters present a wide-ranging series of interventions into the new debates over the concepts and practices of “community” and the communal. For this book, scholars have been gathered from across Europe and Australia as well as from the United States, and several contributors are involved in community practice. Returning (to) Communities is essential reading to researchers and students in social policy, sociology, ethnic studies, cultural analysis, media studies, and across all of the social sciences and humanities concerned with the communal and the collective.

USA/Canada: 295 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 1B, KENILWORTH, NJ 07033, USA Call toll-free (USA only)1-800-225-3998, Tel. 908 298 9071, Fax 908-298-9075 All other countries: Tijnmuiden 7, 1046 AK Amsterdam, The Netherlands Tel. ++ 31 (0)20 611 48 21, Fax ++ 31 (0)20 447 29 79 [email protected] www.rodopi.nl Please note that the exchange rate is subject to fluctuations