1. An Introduction to Genetic Narratology

This article introduces the field of genetic narratology, combining scholarly methods and research interests from genetic criticism and narratology. Research in this field is concerned with, on the one hand the genesis of narratives and on the other hand the narrativization of literary genesis. The first part of the essay focuses not only on the narrated but also on the unnarrated (analysing an omitted passage in Samuel Beckett’s Molloy). The second part investigates how the writing process is often the object of narrativization. Due to numerous circumstances, certain elements of the ‘making-of’ are emphasized, magnified, exaggerated, others are obscured or forgotten, either on purpose or by accident. This narrativization of literary geneses is just as much the object of scrutiny in genetic narratology as the genesis of narratives. While narratology is often mainly concerned with the reception of literary texts, this article focuses on their production, opening up new research perspectives on the workings of the creative imagination as it is documented in manuscripts, notes, drafts and other traces of the writing process.