Please join the East Central European Center and the Harriman Institute for a lecture by István Deák Visiting Assistant Professor, Daniel Pratt. Moderated by Christopher Harwood.
In her Nobel Prize Speech, Olga Tokarczuk advocates for new types of storytelling, ones that defy traditional narrative structures. Older narrative constructions have been used to control the world, a fact, she insists, every tyrant knows. Today, we need to find new narrative forms, because “we lack new ways of telling the story of the world.” Tokarczuk’s oeuvre marks a step in the direction of a new form of telling stories, one that will help make sense of the contemporary world. Tokarczuk has dubbed this new form the constellation novel, told through the titular tender narrator of her lecture in Oslo.
Tokarczuk is not alone, however, but a part of a long line of Central European authors who have developed non-narrative works. In direct contrast to the long line of thinkers, specifically Jerome Bruner, Paul Ricoeur, and Charles Taylor, Central European authors developed a new set of anti-narratological paradigms, beginning from Rainer Marie Rilke, continuing through Dezső Kosztolányi, Bruno Schulz, Bohumil Hrabal, to the present with Tokarczuk herself.
