Narrative Parallelism and Interpretive Narrative

Abstract

The primary goal of my paper is to elaborate a methodology for literary interpretation that points out how a literary narrative prose text interprets its own characters, plots, and existential problems. In this context, one of the main premises of my remarks is that interpretation, is not the privilege of the act of reading. Misreading, or the “sins” of ideological interpretation can only be avoided if it is recognized that reading and interpretation are problems of the text itself. Beyond the formalist, structuralist, and poststructuralist methodologies of literary analysis, I found in Paul Ricœur’s Biblical hermeneutics the interpretive process and conceptual system that are able to reveal the self-interpretive functions of literary narrative works. According to him, there is a special type of text: the interpretive narrative. The interpretive narrative as a special genre designation refers to the Gospels’ narrative presentation of the passion. In a nutshell: the essence of interpretive narrative is that there is a text interpreting process, which is achieved by the narrative discourse itself (“before” any act of reading). In accordance with the results of Biblical hermeneutics but focusing on literary interpretation, I would like to elaborate on the notion of narrative parallelism in order to reveal those poetic conditions of literary narrative by which misreading or the “sins” of ideological reading can be eliminated. Narrative parallelism is a special type of metaphorical process in which a personal story is interpreted by the story of an object. Literary narrative prose has a specific and unique “virtue” compared to other literary genres or non-literary narratives: using descriptive discourse prose language recognizes, reveals, and narrativizes the significance of details. The second premise of my remarks is that the seemingly secondary narrativized details, or the seemingly insignificant stories of the objects, serve as the interpretation of the literary narrative’s central aspects, namely characters, plots, and existential problems. The interpretation of the presentation of the main character’s story is prefigured in a semantic way by the text itself. I would like to explore the main processes of narrative parallelism as an interpretive narrative by the explanation of a short story’s (A. Moravia: Friendship) twofold emplotment.

Affiliated Institutions

• University of Pannonia HU

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