Franz Karl Stanzel (4 August 1923 – 17 October 2023) was an Austrian literary theorist who specialised in English literature.
Born in Molln, Austria, Stanzel finished his degree with Herbert Koziol in Graz. After his habilitation in 1955, he was professor in Göttingen. In 1959, he was offered a position as professor (Ordinariat) in Erlangen. In 1962, he succeeded Koziol in Graz. He was a professor emeritus of English literature at the Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz.
From the 1950s, Stanzel worked on an analytical topology for the description of the narrative mode, also often called "narrative situation" or "point of view" of narrative texts. Despite much criticism, his typological circle of three narrative situations is still taught in introductions to German literary studies at German universities (e. g. the introductions of the famous literary scholar Ansgar Nünning). From the late 1990s, there was a stronger competition by the narrative model of the French narratologist Gérard Genette in Germany.
Stanzel's typological circle featuring "three typical narrative situations", which describes various possibilities of structuring the mediacity of narrative, is based on three elements. These are "mode", "person" and "perspective", which can be divided further into the oppositions "narrator/reflector", "first person/third person" and "internal perspective/external perspective". Thus, Stanzel distinguishes three narrative situations: The "authorial narrative situation" is characterized by the dominance of the external perspective. In the "first-person narrative situation", the events are related by a "narrating I" who takes part in the action in the fictional world as a character or as the "experiencing I". "The figural narrative situation" is marked by the dominance of the reflector mode, restricting to a factual representation or using internal focalisation to create the impression of immediacy.[1]
Stanzel died on 17 October 2023, at the age of 100.[2]
