Complex narrative structure and its implications for the fictional reality in Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

• Grant number: 14/26111-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: April 01, 2015
• End date: March 31, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Helmut Paul Erich Galle
• Grantee: Juliana Daniele Aparecida Lopes
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project intends to understand how the different narrative levels of "Steppenwolf" affect and determine the semantic relations within the novel. Theories on narrative discourse argue that each narrative belongs to a certain level and that each creates its own reality. In the book, the narratives of the "Editor's preface", "Harry Haller's Annotations" and "The tractate of Steppenwolf" are correlated and overlap, establishing an intricate structure that makes it difficult to determine the clear status of fictional reality in the narratives. As a result, the reader is in doubt whether the various elements of the story belong to the same reality, particularly because this reality does not necessarily form a continuum and can be considered realistic or fantastic. Together with the novel's specific complexity goes the fact that there are editions with diverging dispositions of the texts that form the book; each arrangement has different consequences for the construction of meaning. In order to observe, which are the implications of this complex structure, theories on narrative discourse will be considered with the objective to highlight the relations between the narrative(s) and narrated events. The analysis will also be concerned with the narrative acts - the voices that articulate the narrative and that correspond to different types of subjects. An understanding of these aspects and of their deployments can be seen as fundamental to identifying the specific position of the novel in modern literature. (AU)