Recent postclassical narratology has constructed top-down reading models that often remain
blind to the frame-breaking potential of individual literary narratives. Narrative Interrupted
goes beyond the macro framing typical of postclassical narratology and sets out to sketch
approaches more sensitive to generic specificities disturbing details and authorial
interference. Unlike the mainstream cognitive approaches or even the emergent unnatural
narratology the articles collected here explore the artifice involved in presenting something
ordinary and realistic in literature.The first section of the book deals with anti-dynamic
elements such as dialogue details private events and literary boredom. The second section
devoted to extensions of cognitive narratology addresses spatiotemporal oddities and the
possibility of non-human narratives. The third section focuses on frame-breaking fragmentarity
and problems of authorship in the works of Vladimir Nabokov. The book presents readings of
texts ranging from the novels of Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon to the Animal Man comics. The
common denominator for the texts discussed is the interruption of the chain of events or of the
experiential flow of human-like narrative agents.
