The main focus of this article is the term “unnatural” in a narratological analysis of Sam Shepard’s Mad Dog Blues (1971) in the light of ‘possible worlds’ theory. The term is recently coined and, in Jan Alber’s definition, designates those physically, logically, and even humanly impossible scenarios and events—according to the cognitive model of possible worlds—that challenge our real world knowledge. Mad Dog Blues is deemed to be one of the most complicated, fast-moving, and vividly imaginative but also obscure and puzzling of Shepard’s plays. The play in postmodernist fashion teems with a simultaneous collage-like collection of different types of unnatural narratives and storyworlds. It starts with a self-reflexive postmodern list; confronts us with unnatural characters; deconstructs our real-world knowledge about time and temporal progress; and presents us with impossible spaces. The analysis of the play in this essay is based on Jan Alber’s reading strategies which are meant to naturalize the play’s unnatural narratives.

中文翻译：

---

Sam Shepard 的 Mad Dog Blues 中的非自然叙事

本文的主要焦点是根据“可能世界”理论对 Sam Shepard 的 Mad Dog Blues (1971) 进行的叙事学分析中的“非自然”一词。这个词是最近创造的，在 Jan Alber 的定义中，根据可能世界的认知模型，指那些在物理上、逻辑上甚至人类不可能的场景和事件，它们挑战了我们现实世界的知识。Mad Dog Blues 被认为是 Shepard 戏剧中最复杂、最快速、最生动、但也最晦涩难解的戏剧之一。后现代主义时尚的戏剧同时充满了不同类型的非自然叙事和故事世界的拼贴式集合。它从一个自我反思的后现代列表开始；让我们面对不自然的性格；解构我们关于时间和时间进程的现实世界知识；并为我们呈现不可能的空间。本文中对戏剧的分析基于 Jan Alber 的阅读策略，旨在使戏剧的非自然叙事自然化。