Die Erzählformen. Er, Ich, Du und andere Varianten (review)

Petersen's book claims to be nothing less than the first comprehensive analysis of narrative forms, which, for him, means prose texts that have a narrator. Unfortunately, it does not live up to this claim. The book begins with a disappointing overview of narrative theory which already ends in the 1980s (9–26). On the one hand, given this temporal limitation, Petersen inevitably ignores numerous important theoreticians (e.g., Chatman 1990 and postclassical narratologists, such as Herman 1999). On the other hand, he does not necessarily show a sure grasp of the few approaches he discusses (such as Stanzel's Theory of Narrative and Genette's Narrative Discourse).

For example, Petersen does not discuss Chatman's famous distinction between "overt narrators," who communicate directly with the reader, and "covert narrators," who remain hidden in the narrative's discursive shadows (Chatman 1990: 115), and later on acts as though he had invented this dichotomy (see, e.g., 33–34, 43, 60, 76). Furthermore, Petersen believes that Stanzel's figural narrative situation falls outside the scope of mediacy (Mittelbarkeit) because in such cases, no narrator is present (19). Petersen fundamentally misunderstands Stanzel's notion of mediacy: Stanzel argues that the story can either be transmitted through a narrator who functions as a teller ("teller mode") or the mediation can be apparently occluded by a direct, immediate presentation through the consciousness of a reflector-character ("reflector mode") (Stanzel 1984: 150). Petersen also believes that Stanzel's idea that the first-person narrator is always part of the story is mistaken: for Petersen, the narrating self in first-person scenarios is not part of the story (20). However, Petersen fails to note what Stanzel calls "the existential continuity between the narratorial 'I' and the 'I' of the hero of the story" (1984: 82; my italics). Since the narrating self is the older version of the experiencing self, the first-person narrator should be considered part of the story. Somewhat astonishingly, Petersen claims that Genette's Discours du récit is only a reading of Proust without any theoretical reflection or innovation (24). Petersen disregards Genette's influential model which is based on the cross-tabulation of heterodiegetic and homodiegetic forms of narration and types of focalization (zero, internal, and external) (Genette 1980: 189–94; 245), and he makes no mention of the terms extradiegetic, intradiegetic, and metadiegetic, which are used to describe narrative levels (Genette 1980: 228, 1988: 84–95).

In Chapter One (called "Er-Form"), Petersen investigates various manifestations of the heterodiegetic narrator. Among other things, he points out that such narrators may use the present (32, 54ff.) or the past tense (32). Not surprisingly, he also 'discovers' that there are covert narrators (33–34) and slightly more overt ones (43); that it is sometimes difficult to discriminate between author and narrator (44, see Richard Walsh 2007: 78, 84); and that the authorial narrator may refer to himself in terms of 'I' (42, 52, see Stanzel 1984: 90).

In his second chapter (called "Ich-Form"), Petersen notes that the first-person narrator is typically personalized and can be described in terms of character features that pertain to his or her physical existence and corporality (60, see also Stanzel 1984: 90). Petersen also claims to have found out that the first-person narrator can gradually move towards the condition of an authorial narrator (70). However, this is once again nothing new. Stanzel argues that "like all the other boundaries in my narrative theory, the one between the authorial and the first-person narrative situation is open" (1984: 202). Furthermore, Petersen believes that he has discovered that the first-person narrator can be covert or neutral (76). In this case, he does not acknowledge that Genette has already described this constellation in terms of homodiegetic narration with external focalization (1988: 121). Petersen also points out that first-person narrators can be unreliable, and that this is much more difficult for heterodiegetic narrators (90–91), which is standard...