Narrativity, Coherence and Literariness

A Theoretical Approach with Analyses of Laclos, Kafka and Toussaint

Eva Sabine Wagner

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2020
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110673197
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Die Reihe Narratologia publiziert innovative Monographien und Sammelbände zur modernen Erzähltheorie und zu ihrer fachgeschichtlichen Rekonstruktion aus allen philologischen Disziplinen. Sie stellt das erste narratologische Forum dieser Art in Deutschland dar. Neben literarischen Texten stehen u. a. auch das Alltagserzählen, Wort-Bild-Texte, Erzählen im Film und in den neuen Medien sowie das Erzählen in Historiographie, Ethnologie, Medizin und Rechtswissenschaft im Fokus der Reihe.

Die Publikationssprachen der Reihe sind Deutsch und Englisch. Alle Bände werden zweifach begutachtet.

Part B: Narrative Dynamics

4 “Narrative Projection”: Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses

4.1 Ambiguity: Forms and features

4.1.1 Ambiguity in linguistics and literary theory

Ambiguity is generally considered to denote the lack of a 1:1 correspondence between expression and meaning. It has been theorised both in linguistics and in literary theory and plays at least implicitly also a role in narratology.

In linguistics, one distinguishes between lexical, structural (syntactical) and pragmatic ambiguity. Zimmermann and Sternefeld “take (linguistic) expression as consisting of forms together with meanings. The phenomenon that one form may carry more than one meaning is known as ambiguity. Thus different expressions with the same form are said to be ambiguous; and if they are single words, linguists also speak of lexical ambiguity” (2013, 14, original emphasis deleted). Structural ambiguities, by contrast, occur when a sequence of words expresses (at least) two different meanings without containing any ambiguous words, such that the sentence may be interpreted according to different syntactic structures. This is the case, for example, in the sentence “John saw the man with the binoculars”, where the prepositional phrase “with the binoculars” can be considered to specify either the verb (“saw”) or the noun (“the man”, see Zimmermann and Sternefeld 2013, 25–26). Thirdly, pragmatic ambiguity means that an utterance can be understood as presenting different illocutions: “It’s drafty”, for example, can either be interpreted as a statement or as an indirect request to close the door (see Kaiser 2007, 18).

Concerning theories of ambiguity in literary theory, I would like to concentrate on William Empson’s (1973) seminal study Seven Types of Ambiguity and complete my considerations by means of two more recent approaches, Reuven Tsur’s (2008; 2012) theory of cognitive poetics and an article from Lisa Otty and Andrew Michael Roberts (2013).

Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity, first published in 1930, is still quite influential,¹ which is not astonishing inasmuch as Empson elaborates on fundamental problems and dimensions of ambiguity. While the title of his work may suggest a rigid categorisation, Empson highlights indeed “the ambiguity of ambiguity” (24):

‘Ambiguity’ itself can mean an indecision as to what you mean, an intention to mean several things, a probability that one or other or both of two things has been meant, and the fact that a statement has several meanings. It is useful to be able to separate these if you wish, but it is not obvious that in separating them at any particular point you will not be raising more problems than you solve.

(Empson 1973, 24)

Empson generally considers as ambiguous “any verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room for alternative reactions to the same piece of language” (1973, 19) or “a word or a grammatical structure [which] is effective in several ways at once” (20–21), that is, cases where “the possible alternative meanings of word or grammar are used to give alternative meanings to the sentence” (92, note 6). Although Empson is known as a “New Critic” (see Tsur 2012, 102), he does not consider ambiguity to be an inherently textual phenomenon. Instead, he considers both the author and the reader as the loci where ambiguity can be “effective”:

It might seem more reasonable, when dealing with obscure alternatives of syntax, to abandon the claim that you are explaining a thing communicated, to say either that you are showing what happened in the author’s mind (this should interest the biographer) or what was likely to happen in a reader’s mind (this should interest the poet). This might be more tidy, but, like many forms of doubt, it would itself claim to know too much; the rules as to what is conveyable are so much more mysterious even than the rules governing the effects of ambiguity, whether on the reader or the author, that it is better to talk about both parties at once, and be thankful if what you say is true about either.

(Empson 1973, 280–281)

The interpretative activities of the reader play indeed a crucial role in Empson’s account. Consider, for example, his description of the third type of ambiguity, which “may describe two situations and leave the reader to infer various things which can be said about both of them” (137, emphasis mine); or consider the sixth type of ambiguity, which “occurs when a statement says nothing, by tautology, by contradiction, or by irrelevant statements; so that the reader is forced to invent statements of his own and they are liable to conflict with one another” (207, emphasis mine). In view of these reception-oriented implications of Empson’s theory, it is surprising to find Lisa Otty and Andrew M. Roberts arguing quite recently for “a shift from considering ambiguity in terms of aesthesis (in the sense of a relatively passive reception of an art work or experience) to thinking it in terms of poiesis (in the sense of a creative generative process of interpretation)” (2013, 38). But before discussing in detail Otty and Andrew’s approach, I would like to finish my summary of Empson.

It is crucial to know that, for Empson, “the machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry” (21), poetry being understood as different from prose.² It seems that, for Empson, lyrical poetry makes the most “poetical use of language” (45), in that it achieves the highest degree of “compactness” (44, 48), for instance by contracting several sentences into one (93), or, more generally, by achieving a high degree of “compression of thought” (190) – notably by creating different “types of ambiguity”. The seven types of ambiguity that Empson identifies are, “so far as they are not merely a convenient framework, […] intended as stages of advancing logical disorder” (69). For our purposes, though, the scalar nature of Empson’s typology is more interesting than a summary of the seven types themselves. The seven types spring from different emphases of meaning (e.g. as an effect of rhythm) via increasingly incompatible meanings to cases where “the two meanings of the word, the two values of the ambiguity, are the two opposite meanings defined by the context, so that the total effect is to show a fundamental division in the writer’s mind” (225, emphasis mine). One may thus say that the “increase of logical disorder”,³ which governs the scale, also denotes an increase of dissonance between the different meanings implied by one and the same form.⁴

Empson emphasises that the (different degrees of) dissonance or competition between meanings, which characterise ambiguity, have a counterpart or complement: the unity, coherence or closure that holds the ambiguous constituents together: “anything (phrase, sentence, poem) meant to be considered as a unit must be unitary, must stand for a single order of the mind” (271). A kind of synthesis counterbalances the “multiplicity of associations” (271) insofar as “there must be ‘forces’ holding its [i.e. ambiguity’s] elements together” (271) – forces that “are essential to the totality of a poem, and that […] cannot be discussed in terms of ambiguity, because they are complementary to it” (272). Although these unifying forces are idiosyncratic and peculiar to each poem, they arise from a more universal requirement according to which the specific situation depicted by the poem – the poem’s reference – demands ambiguity as a means of conveying the complexity of the situation effectively.⁵ “An ambiguity, then, is not satisfying in itself, nor is it, considered as a device on its own, a thing to be attempted; it must in each case arise from, and be justified by, the peculiar requirements of the situation” (272). This necessity of ambiguity is what, for Empson, not only guarantees its unity and coherence, but also its beauty (in terms of the compactness and compressi...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Coming to Terms with Complexity
• Part A: Theory of Narrativity
• Part B: Narrative Dynamics
• Index