Point of View and the Modalities of Narrative

In this paper I will envisage the relationship between narrative modalities and point of view with the help of the narratological theory of Christo Todorov, who is a representative of the Bulgarian Guillaumist school. First, I will point to the multimodality of narrative modal logic with its combination of different types of modal categories (alethic, deontic, volitive, etc.). Then I will introduce Christo Todorov’s distinction between modal and transmodal categories, according to which modality (ability, desire, obligation) is what characterises the actions and transmodality (perception, emotion, intellection) is what characterises the subject of action. Along with Todorov I will claim that there are both modal and transmodal points of view, but unlike him I will define the point of view based not on the subject-image but on the directedness it introduces. My point will be that there is a double direction of the point of view: on the one hand, the direction of the subject to the object, and, on the other, the direction from one modality to another. This double direction, I will argue, is at the very basis of narrative logic, or of what I would call the ‘narrative potentiality.’