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Document Details :

Title: Lezen over morgen
Subtitle: Nederlandstalige toekomstliteratuur door de ogen van de lezer
Author(s): PIERRART, Thomas
Journal: Spiegel der Letteren
Volume: 58    Issue: 3   Date: 2016   
Pages: 351-375
DOI: 10.2143/SDL.58.3.3178232

Abstract :
Throughout the years, Dutch literary scholars have defined the genre of ‘future narratives’ (‘toekomstliteratuur’) in varied and often unsatisfactorily motivated ways, in particular concerning the relationships with genres such as the utopia and science fiction. This article offers a new and dynamic framework to study the genre. The proposed model attributes a decisive role to the reader as it is his or her perception of the narrative world that generates the ‘future-effect’, the fact that a world is (or can be) perceived as a futuristic world. The triggers of this reader-effect (explicit textual statements, extrapolation and naturalization) are discussed here and used to develop a new point of view to consider the relationships between future narratives, science fiction and utopian novels.

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