Abstract

One of the most distinctive features of Fear and Trembling is Kierkegaard’s use of narrative variations in order to isolate, develop, and highlight the relevant features of his principal theme, the story of Abraham and Isaac, especially Abraham’s final test of faith. The book begins with a preface and ends with an epilogue; immediately within these, Kierkegaard has his pseudonym, Johannes de Silentio, provide such variations in the “Attunement” or Stemning, just following the Preface, and in Problema III, just before the Epilogue. What is the purpose of these narrative variations? How are they intended to prepare the reader to understand Abraham? How, in short, do they clarify the nature and difficulty of faith? I argue, on the basis of the account of "mood" given in Concept of Anxiety, that the variations of the Attunement function to modulate the "mood" of the work by converting a fixed narrative into a possibility field, thereby giving the work a mood of anguish or anxiety rather than a detached or scholarly mood, while the variations of Problema III function to callapse this mood into interested admiration. I conclude with some remarks about what this suggests for a reader that wishes to "go further" than Johannes de Silentio.