Journal of Literary Criticism

Journal of Literary Criticism

Tellability in Surrealist Narrative

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Nasrin Sohrabi 1
Ghodrat Ghasemipour 2
Manoochehr Joukar 2
1 Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Department of Persian Language and Literature
2 Department of Persian Language and Literature, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz-Iran
10.22034/jlc.2024.444313.1621
Abstract
Copyright: © 2025 by the authors. Submitted for possible open access publication under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY -NC) license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).





 



Tellability is a concept in the field of narratology, referring to the point and value of narrative in a general sense. The theorists of this field, such as William Labov and Marie-Lou Ryan, have formulated principles for it based on conventional narratives. Surrealist narratives are part of the wider realm of unnatural narratives, in which the world-building of the story is beyond the realist conventions. Therefore, the issue that is raised is, what are the mechanisms of tellability in these narratives? How is the purpose and point of the narrative out of reach in the surrealist narrative. The two approaches of cognitive poetics and unnatural narratology, each with their own concepts and methodology, have pointed to the issue of reduction and lack of tellability in these narratives. This article uses a descriptive analytical method while examining the theoretical background of tellability; by combining and expanding the two approaches, it provides a model to explain tellability in surrealist and unnatural narrative. Three short stories with a surrealist style by Sadegh Hedayat, Bijan Najdi, and Abbas Maroufi have been selected for practical criticism. This study shows that the narratives reduce tellability by transgressing realistic conventions, through unnatural sequences, unnatural world-building, challenges in coherence and third-order informativity. Readers use natural reading strategies and downgraing to bring the text to an acceptable tellability level. Reducing transmissibility is one of the important functions of surrealist narratives, and part of the power of these narratives depends on reducing this component and the experience of uncertainty.
 
Keywords
tellability
surrealist short story
unnatural narratology
cognitive poetics
Sadegh Hedayat
Bijan Najdi
Abbas Maroufi
Subjects
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Journal of Literary Criticism
Volume 9, Issue 18
November 2025
Pages 136-91

  • Receive Date 17 February 2024
  • Revise Date 10 April 2024
  • Accept Date 16 April 2024