Marie-Laure Ryan

Bio: Marie-Laure Ryan is an academic researcher from University of Colorado Boulder. The author has contributed to research in topics: Narrative & Narratology. The author has an hindex of 28, co-authored 81 publications receiving 4963 citations.

Intermediality and storytelling

Abstract: Extending narratological analysis to media as varied as graphic novels, photography, television, musicals, computer games and advertising, the essays gathered in this volume address some of the most fundamental questions raised by the medial turn in narratology: how can narrative meaning be created in media other than language; how do different types of signs collaborate with each other in so-called; multimodal works'; and, what new forms of narrativity are made possible by the emergence of digital media.

Cheap Plot Tricks, Plot Holes, and Narrative Design

Abstract: In narrative, plot exists on two levels: the plotting of the author, who creates the storyline; and the plotting of the characters, who set goals, devise plans, schemes and conspiracies, and try to arrange events to their advantage. The plotting of both author and characters is meant to exercise control: for the author, control over the reader, who must undergo a certain experience; for the characters, control over other char- acters and over the randomness of life. But sometimes the goals of the author are at odds with the goals of characters. The author needs to make the characters take par- ticular actions to produce a certain effect on the reader, such as intense suspense, cu- riosity, or emotional involvement; but acting toward this situation defies narrative logic, because is not in the best interest of the characters, or not in line with their per- sonality. In this article I propose to investigate two types of aesthetically deficient plot twists that arise from this conflict between author and character goals. One in- volves an active intervention by the author, an attempt to fix the problem through hackneyed devices; I call this "cheap plot tricks" (henceforth CPT). The other results from ignoring the problem, or covering it up, a strategy (or omission) that leads to what is known among film writers as "plot holes" (henceforth PH). Through this em- phasis on the kind of events that makes the sophisticated reader groan, I will be breaking away from the almost exclusively descriptive tradition of both classical and postclassical narratology, and I will adopt an evaluative stance closer to the prescrip- tive spirit of Aristotle's Poetics.

The creative mind: myths and mechanisms

Abstract: How is it possible to think new thoughts? What is creativity and can science explain it? And just how did Coleridge dream up the creatures of The Ancient Mariner? When The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms was first published, Margaret A. Boden's bold and provocative exploration of creativity broke new ground. Boden uses examples such as jazz improvisation, chess, story writing, physics, and the music of Mozart together with computing models from the field of artificial intelligence to uncover the nature of human creativity in the arts, science and everyday life. The second edition of The Creative Mind has been updated to include recent developments in artificial intelligence, with a new preface, introduction and conclusion by the author. It is an essential work for anyone interested in the creativity of the human mind.

The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality

Abstract: To raise the question of the nature of narrative is to invite reflection on the very nature of culture and, possibly, even on the nature of humanity itself. So natural is the impulse to narrate, so inevitable is the form of narrative for any report of the way things really happened, that narrativity could appear problematical only in a culture in which it was absent-absent or, as in some domains of contemporary Western intellectual and artistic culture, programmatically refused. As a panglobal fact of culture, narrative and narration are less problems than simply data. As the late (and already profoundly missed) Roland Barthes remarked, narrative "is simply there like life itself. . international, transhistorical, transcultural."' Far from being a problem, then, narrative might well be considered a solution to a problem of general human concern, namely, the problem of how to translate knowing into telling,2 the problem of fashioning human experience into a form assimilable to structures of meaning that are generally human rather than culture-specific. We may not be able fully to comprehend specific thought patterns of another culture, but we have relatively less difficulty understanding a story coming from another culture, however exotic that

Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication:

Abstract: but the threat they bring to artistic culture. From his opening mockery of the literary establishment’s tendency to theorize the world in terms of desire or gender to his disapproval of those who venerate art while denying its validity in the same breath, Jonathan Dollimore has created an easily understood, albeit at times too theoretical, synthesis of the literary and the experiential in Sex, Literature and Censorship. His arguments on critical theory do not necessarily reject the concept of theory; rather, he argues that critical theorists should strive to understand the contradictions within our lives and our literature and explore the daemonic power of the subjects that offend our sense of tradition.

The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative

Abstract: What is narrative? How does it work and how does it shape our lives? H. Porter Abbott emphasizes that narrative is found not just in literature, film, and theatre, but everywhere in the ordinary course of people's lives. This widely used introduction, now revised and expanded in its third edition, is informed throughout by recent developments in the field and includes one new chapter. The glossary and bibliography have been expanded, and new sections explore unnatural narrative, retrograde narrative, reader-resistant narratives, intermedial narrative, narrativity, and multiple interpretation. With its lucid exposition of concepts, and suggestions for further reading, this book is not only an excellent introduction for courses focused on narrative but also an invaluable resource for students and scholars across a wide range of fields, including literature and drama, film and media, society and politics, journalism, autobiography, history, and still others throughout the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts

Abstract: Preface Introduction: The Role of the Reader I. Open 1. The Poetics of the Open Work 2. The Semantics of Metaphor 3. On the Possibility of Generating Aesthetic Messages in an Edenic Language II. Closed 4. The Myth of Superman 5. Rhetoric and Ideology in Sue's Les Mysteres de Paris 6. Narrative Structures in Fleming III. Open/Closed 7. Peirce and the Semiotic Foundations of Openness: Signs as Texts and Texts as Signs 8. Lector in Fabula: Pragmatic Strategy in a Metanarrative Text Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Bibliography