A guiding premise for this research project has been that no human culture can emerge without defining itself by means of the telling of stories. We understand ourselves, our fellows, and our lives by incorporating them into narrative accounts. Investigations into various forms of narrative have contributed to the development of narrative theory. As this growing body of knowledge now plays an essential part in a wide range of academic disciplines, a significant part of the team’s work has been interdisciplinary in its orientation. Thus, although the basis for the project was literary studies, we studied not only verbal, but also filmic fictions, as well as historical narratives.

Throughout our year at CAS, one main premise for the team’s understanding and application of ‘narrative theory’ has been, and still is, that narrative theory and analysis are, and should be, closely interrelated. Although narrative analysis has sometimes been seen as a purely formalistic and technical activity, our work at CAS has been informed by the view that the way in which a narrative is structured and understood (by both its creator and its interpreter) has fundamental interpretative and moral significance.

The main questions and issues explored by the research team have been divided into two problem areas: first, analysis of modernist narrative, concentrating on the fiction of Joseph Conrad and Franz Kafka; second, exploration of narrative by focusing on the relationship between fiction and history.

Modernist fiction, and not least that of Conrad and Kafka, presents a particular challenge to the study of narrative: it is the product of the epistemic break at the turn of the twentieth century, which generated an aesthetic break and a problematization of realistic narrative premises. As regards the second problem area, we have concentrated on narrative representations of and responses to the Holocaust. Studying examples of both, the team has focused on the complex and shifting relationship between past and present selves as presented in first-person and third-person autobiographical and fictional Holocaust narratives.

As this general description indicates, all the team’s work at CAS has been informed and aided by narrative theory. The insights, methodology and terminology associated with this body of theory have proved very useful.

Moreover, our overall idea of linking narrative theory to analysis of the relevant texts also proved critically productive. This turned out to be a process that works two ways: on the one hand, the team’s narrative analyses have been aided by narrative theory; on the other hand, the analyses carried out by team members also made it possible to criticise and refine constituent elements of narrative theory. A related characteristic feature of the team’s work, which became increasingly apparent as the year progressed, was the critical fruitfulness of linking significant issues of both narrative theory and analysis to problems and questions observable in related disciplines such as philosophy, history, and studies of photography and film.

The main aim of the project was to produce three academic books: one on Conrad, one on Kafka, and one on narrative representations of the Holocaust.

As far as the first two are concerned, an essential part of the work was linked to two international colloquia arranged at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in September 2005 and May 2006. These events constitute the basis for the first two books, entitled Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, edited by Jakob Lothe, Jeremy Hawthorn, and James Phelan, and (provisionally) Franz Kafka: Narrative, History, Genre, edited by Jakob Lothe, Beatrice Sandberg, and Ronald Speirs.

The book on narrative representations of the Holocaust, tentatively entitled After Testimony: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Holocaust Narrative and edited by Jakob Lothe, Susan Suleiman, and James Phelan, is based on seminars arranged at CAS during the project year; and it was also inspired by an excursion to Berlin in October 2005. An additional bonus deriving from the team’s work is the book Tidsvitner: Fortellinger fra Auschwitz og Sachsenhausen (Time Witnesses: Narratives from Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen), edited by Jakob Lothe and Anette Storeide and published on 14 September 2006 by Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, Oslo.