Det er du som er protagonisten, ikke jeg. Nei, ikke du heller : En studie av 2. personfremstillingen i nordisk litteratur

Abstract

In this master thesis I do a text-imaging, narratological and thematic analysis via a comparative method. I analyse 16 texts in the novel genre and short story genre, in relation to the use of second-person narration. I analyse the texts in relation to how the narrator is located locally and temporally in the second-person narration, and how the second-person narration is used to support certain themes. I have divided the analysis into two, where I analyse the genres individually in terms of the genre's premise. I have rendered key points of the field of second-person narration and tested the theory from prominent researchers within the field, Monika Fludernik, Brian Richardson, Irene Kacandes, Helmut Bonheim and Rolf Reitan respectively. A key finding in the thesis is that the theory of the field requires an update. In the years after the theory has been summarized, many new texts have been published that use a second-person narration, and these often use the technique differently from what has been defined in the theory. The narrative theory also has its short comings on certain points. The previous research of the field has mostly focused on the narrator, but in the analysis, I have discovered a very interesting aspect of how this form of narration is used to support a specific theme in the text. The form of narration is widely used to give the impression that the protagonist has an external feeling to himself and his surroundings, by telling his own story and actions in you-form. In these texts, the discourse itself creates an expression of exclusion, which I claim is distinctive to the second-person narration. This technique is also particularly prominent in texts that alternate between different narrations and in short story texts. In the analysis I have tested the question "Who is narrating?" on all the texts and this has proved difficult to answer. In a second-person narration there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the narrator, and it is often manifold. As a reader of a text in second-person narration, one can both feel addressed and still understand that it is the protagonist who is being addressed.