Unveiling Storyworld Affordances. A New Perspective on Narrative Gaps and Literary Description

Abstract

The article introduces the concept of storyworld affordances into narratological research and operationalises it in the context of narrative gaps. Its central proposal is the notion of relational gaps, grounded in the relational structure of withdrawn affordances. It also explores what follows from the assumption that affordances are both actualised and latently present within fictional worlds – namely, how this shapes the interpretation of literary texts, the reader’s cognitive process of inhabiting the fictional world, and the functions of literary description. To address these questions, the article proposes a method of reading through storyworld affordances across three registers – referential, inferential, and speculative – tested above all on the ending of The Homeless by Stefan Żeromski (1900), where affordances as relational gaps prove especially consequential. The paper concludes by sketching several directions for further research, particularly in the context of econarratology and object-oriented narratology.