Perhaps this paradox is unavoidable within the terms of Verstarten’s essentialist goals. The paradoxical problem of this agenda is that, while defining filmic narration in reference to its deviations from literature (not in itself a problem), Verstraten maintains the dubious perspective of a narrative ontologist. It is the deviation(s) of cinema as a medium from Bal’s narratology of literature that Verstraten is most concerned to explain. As an application and modification of the narratological principles proposed by Mieke Bal in Narratology (first published in Dutch in 1978 and since significantly revised in English), Verstraten seeks to define film narratology in relief, as it were. The inherent problem in Verstraten’s aim – a problem that permeates the whole book – is that his concern to articulate the essential conditions of filmic narration is premised on a principle of difference. 9) “The altered nature of narration in cinema is an urgent reason to rethink filmic narrativity.” (p. “There are,” Verstraten writes, “to paraphrase Seymour Chatman, many things that novels can do that film cannot and vice versa.” (p. As a hypothetical outline of the essential conditions of filmic narration, Film Narratology attempts to target and define those specific devices of the cinema that are foundational to cinematic narration and that differentiate the cinematic medium from literature. In Film Narratology Peter Verstraten attempts one of film theory’s more ambitious and potentially fatal balancing acts. (Review copy supplied by University of Toronto Press) Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009 Peter Verstraten (translated by Stefan van der Lecq),įilm Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative.

Bordwell film