Two Conceptions of Experientiality and Narrativity: Functions, Advantages, and Disadvantages

In Fludernik’s Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology, there are two different conceptions of experientiality, one broader and the other more nuanced, the coexistence of which is an ingenious design and one necessary for the book both to make the powerful cognitive impact on the field and to show how readers use different frames to interpret different types of narratives. Similarly, we can find two different conceptions of “narrativity” which, though distinct from each other, together form a balanced cognitive-textual equilibrium. This paper analyzes the features, functions, advantages, and disadvantages of the different conceptions, pointing out their different roles in the 1990s and the present day.