Showing papers in "Style in 2017"

Fictionality, Narrative Modes, and Vicarious Storytelling

Abstract: One of the key issues in the interplay between artistic and everyday narrative practices is the question whether some modes of telling are specific or exclusive to one or the other Whereas in contemporary narrative studies it is a commonplace to understand everyday oral narratives as a prototype of all narrative forms, the traffic from artistic, fictional narratives toward everyday storytelling has received much less attention However, socionarratology, for example, reminds us of the cultural and conventional basis for all human interaction and narrative sense-making In 1999, David Herman postulated this integrated, narrative-analytical approach which he termed socionarratology, a conceptual model that "situates stories in a constellation of linguistic, cognitive, and contextual factors" (Herman 219) Matti Hyvarinen ("Expectations and Experientiality"), drawing on the idea of socionarratology, points out how the expected in the form of generic models and cultural scripts shapes both literary and everyday narratives Yet, he has also concluded that there might, after all, be significant differences in literary and everyday narratives especially when it comes to mind reading or mind attribution (Hyvarinen, "Mind Reading" 238) Jarmila Mildorf ("Thought Presentation") showed how storytellers may circumvent the problems surrounding mind attribution in everyday storytelling by resorting to other, more indirect means of thought presentation, such as constructed dialogue Fictionality, understood--among other things--as specific ways to represent minds in narratives also outside of fiction, clearly needs to be further studied The signposts of fictionality are usually understood to include paratextual signals, the synchronic relation between story and discourse, the dissociation of the author and the narrator, and the representation of thought and consciousness (Cohn, "Signposts" 800; Grishakova 65) To offer a rough outline, one could say that fictionality studies today emphasize either paratextuality (eg, Walsh, The Rhetoric), authors and their communicative intentions (eg, Nielsen and Phelan), or narrative modes of consciousness representation; our approach falls into the last category (Hatavara and Mildorf) Since the last category is the only one to do with narrative discourse modes per se, that is what our article concentrates on in the effort to study the traffic from the fictional to the everyday in narrative means of mind representation We understand fictionality as a conglomeration of narrative discourse modes characteristic of generic fiction but not confined to it This partly follows and extends the tradition of discourse-narratological studies on fictionality Even though this tradition searched for "fiction-specific" narrative modes (Cohn, Distinction 2; "Signposts" 779), it is worth noticing that the possibility of expanding fictional modes beyond fiction was recognized from an early stage on Dorrit Cohn pointed out almost thirty years ago that narratology was unaware "of the places where its findings are specific to the fictional domain and need to be modified before they can apply to neighboring narrative precincts" (Cohn, "Signposts" 800) Using a life story interview as our test case we identify signposts of fictionality, analyze how they function in a nonfictional environment and try to point out issues requiring further theoretical modification In order to account for cognitive and contextual as well as linguistic factors of stories, and to do justice to the nature of life story interviews both as personal testimony and as a semiotic object, we introduce the term cross-fictionality to characterize a narrative where the frame of reference is nonfictional but the narrative modes include those that are conventionally regarded as fictional Therefore, cross-fictionality denotes narrative features that are characteristic of fiction but are also able to cross to other narrative environments …

Whose Story is it Anyway? Following Everyday Accounts of Living with Dementia on Social Media

Abstract: Increased interest in interdisciplinary approaches and the emergence of new media narratives have led to widespread challenges to prototypical narratives of the self derived largely from studies of literary fiction For example, Hyvarinen et al set out to challenge what they call the "coherence paradigm" in narrative studies, contesting the view that coherence is essential for the telling of "good and healthy life stories" (l) However, it is the focus on the "small stories" told on social media that has perhaps brought about the most sustained reevaluation of what counts as a life story, and what counts as being worthy of detailed scholarly analysis In particular, in her study of blogs and Facebook updates, Ruth Page ("Stories and Social Media") argues that the episodic narratives found on electronic media do not fall readily into the traditional categories provided by narratologists Similarly, Georgakopolou's focus on interactions and identity formation in the narratives found on social media demonstrate how retrospection and teleology have given way to breaking news and anticipation, and to fluidity and hybridity This article will focus on an analysis of everyday accounts of living with dementia found on social media, more specifically Twitter, a microblogging platform which restricts users to posts of no more than 140 characters The discussion aims to address specific issues of control raised by these narratives, both in terms of the ownership and distribution of the stories, and in terms of the sense of self these accounts may provide The article will also reflect on the specific methodological and ethical issues raised in analysing the small stories found on social media (1) Storytelling, and especially the invitation to tell your story is key to motivating and sustaining participation on social media Recent studies (eg, Marwick) have moved beyond the cyber-utopianism of early accounts to consider whether social media in fact exploits the emotional labour of users and facilitates only a crude kind of "self-branding" to pander to the needs of advertisers Nevertheless, social media platforms have been celebrated for providing a means for the expression of "vernacular creativity" (Burgess) and for providing users with ways to chronicle their existence (Gauntlett) and to experience new kinds of identity play (Turkle) The low barriers to expression and participation (Jenkins) in terms of technical or other expertise have made it possible for millions of users to take up the invitation to "start telling your story" (Twitter mission statement, 2015), and to share the minutiae of their daily routines in (near) real time The ephemerality and "nowness" of social media storytelling (discussed by Page, "Stories and Social Media"; Thomas, "140 Characters") must be understood in the context of the emergence of a so-called "attention economy" where display and the amplification of everyday experiences is paramount But it may also be argued to allow for ways of conceiving the self and identity as a performance or a project (Giddens) which is ongoing, fluid, and reactive Social media users' "lifestreaming" (Marwick 208) of their daily routines combines both self-quantification in the sense of recording even the most inconsequential of life events and an opening out of those events for comment and response by others It has been argued to produce a "type of funhouse mirror" of a life, and an "ambient awareness" of others' lives for an audience that is constantly surveilling but also connecting with each other (Marwick 211, 214) Thus along with potentially new conceptions of the self, we may also find new kinds of sociality emerging, as well as new ways of marking key life events, determined in part by specific features of platform interfaces, for example Facebook's Timeline feature Moreover, the idea of the networked self allows for discontinuity as well as continuity in how the self is narrated, shared, and taken up across different platforms, whereas the idea of the user as curator points to the way in which users may rely on content produced by others in their shaping of the version of their selves they want to present in differently defined contexts …

The Role of Desired Future Selves in the Creation of New Experience: The Case of Greek Unemployed Young Adults

Abstract: RECONSTRUCTING PAST AND FUTURE TO CREATE NEW EXPERIENCE The reconstruction of past and future is a central topic of research in both psychological and historical science. Psychological research on time perspective indicates that while imagining the future and remembering the past are common processes people engage in, some people are more disposed to orient toward the future than others (Boniwell and Zimbardo; Vowinckel et al). Imagining the future is similar to remembering the past in the sense that both processes involve an interpretation from the point of view of the present. Life review, that is, a structured form of reminiscence, is based on the principle that the meaning of past actions and events as well as the self can be rewritten. This notion of "rewriting the self" (Freeman) is based on an analogy between life and story. In the narrative approach we adopt here, the self is defined as an evolving story (McAdams), which is multivoiced (Hermans and Kempen), and validated in social interaction (Gergen). In telling, writing, and sharing stories about themselves and their life world people constitute who they are and are not; what they desire, seek, and imagine; going beyond the present; and integrating cultural memory and historical consciousness (Brockmeier 79). More particularly, life review draws on strategies to revise the self in such a way that more acceptance and integration of negative life events and more authorship of the life story is achieved (Westerhof and Bohlmeijer). Narrative futuring, for example, a guided process of writing from the future to the present (i.e., letters from the future) can be viewed as the future-oriented counterpart of life review (Sools et al., "Mapping Letters from the Future"). An important function of incidentally occurring future imagination in everyday life, but even more so of its structured extension narrative futuring, is to guide present thought and action (Sools and Mooren). Narrative futuring offers a way to reconstruct the self in light of desired ends in a process that involves the articulation of values and goals, and the means to achieve them. Hence, looking forward and looking back both depart from the present, but serve different functions. While the construction of the past and the future share "present-centeredness," according to theoretical historian Koselleck "these are not symmetrical complementary concepts [...] Experience and expectation, rather, are of different orders" (260). While the past makes up a "space of experience," the future should be more accurately conceptualized as a "horizon of expectation," which "directs itself to the not-yet, to the nonexperienced, to that which is to be revealed" (259). The assumption that the future cannot be experienced in the same way as the past has been dominating narrative theory and argumentation about the construction of past and future. The argument includes, "There is a crucial formal difference between images and stories recollected and those projected. Those recollected are capable of high definition, a large measure of completeness. An image of the future is vague and sketchy, a story incomplete and thin" (Crites 164-65). Narrative futuring, however, presents an alternative in which the future can become, at least partially, an experience (Sools et al., "Mapping Letters from the Future", Tromp, and Mooren). This future-made present is achieved by constructing a future self as if realized, with a vivid portrayal of the future self "as an experiencing subject" (Crites 167). By bringing future and present into a single imaginative and experiential plane, the potential of the "penetration of the horizon of expectation" necessary for the creation of new experience (Koselleck 260) comes closer into view. After all, a future that is fully founded upon past experience will result in the recurrence of that experience in the present. The unexpected, filled with an element of surprise, may create new experience. …

From Enargeia to Immersion: The Ancient Roots of a Modern Concept

Abstract: This article argues that the modern notion of immersion, a reader being absorbed in a virtual world to such a degree that she experiences it as if it were the actual world, has a predecessor in the ancient notion of enargeia , “the power of bringing the things that are said before the senses of the audience.” First, it discusses how ancient Greek literary critics theorized about e nargeia . Since these critics praise Homer as an author who is particularly capable of achieving enargeia , its second objective is to examine the narrative techniques by which he immerses his audience in his story world.

Dementia, Positioning and the Narrative Self

Abstract: The narrative self has historically been identified with long, autobiographical narratives. However, medical and neuropsychological studies have portrayed Alzheimer's disease from the perspective of a gradual loss of memory and selfhood. During the progression of the disease, the traditional concept of the narrative self loses much of its relevance. This article suggests that positioning analysis offers powerful tools for locating the agentive, embodied and fragmentarily narrative self of patients with advanced dementia. Videotaped occupational therapy sessions from a Japanese nursing home are used to study borderline cases of the narrative self that challenge the dominant models for theorizing selfhood. The two women studied have advanced dementia and yet possess an urge to tell about and visit their pasts—the remains of their narrative selves. The article suggests that "narrative" in the narrative self should be understood as a verb or an adjective, and not exclusively as a noun.

Joint Functioning of Two Parallel Trajectories of Signification: Ambrose Bierce's "A Horseman in the Sky"

Abstract: In interpreting a literary narrative, we usually go along one trajectory of signification and explore what thematic message is conveyed by the verbal choices in the text. But in some literary narratives, there exist two parallel trajectories of signification. They are, on the one hand, independent, each functioning on its own, and on the other need each other in the meaning making of the text. Although working together in generating the thematic message, they do go in conflicting thematic directions. Paying attention only to one trajectory will lead to the suppression of the thematic meaning the linguistic choices simultaneously generate in the other trajectory, resulting in a one-sided picture. If we uncover how the two parallel trajectories contradict, condition, and complement each other, we will not only get a fuller and more balanced picture of the thematic significance of the text, but also come to see the tension and semantic density of this kind of literary texts from a new angle. Moreover, we are invited to see meaning not as meaning generated in a text but as meaning generated in a given trajectory of signification in the text. In what follows, I will first reveal, step by step, the dual trajectory of signification in Ambrose Bierce's "A Horseman in the Sky" (1891), prefacing the analysis with a brief summary of existing criticisms. Then I will compare this text with Bierce's "The Affair at Coulter's Notch" (1891), which only has a single trajectory of signification but which has been put on a par with the other text. Based on the analysis, I will explain how the dual trajectory of signification differs from various kinds of complicated meaning as previously investigated. In addition, I will suggest how to uncover the dual trajectory. PREVIOUS CRITICISMS OF "A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY" Bierce's "A Horseman in the Sky" is one of the most famous American Civil War stories. It has a tragic plot: A young Virginian named Carter Druse joins the Union army, and while on sentry duty, he discovers a Confederate horseman spy at the edge of a cliff. The spy turns out to be no other than his own father, who he has to kill for the protection of five regiments of his comrades. Remembering his father's words that he should always do his duty, he fires at the horse, resulting in the falling of the father on horseback from the top of the cliff. Focusing on the victim, Allan Smith thinks that the story "might indeed reasonably be subtitled 'The Dead Father'" (72). Other critics pay more attention to the son as the central character, who is one of the protagonists of Bierce's war stories "trapped in an explicable nightmare world of sudden and often random destruction," a trap in this case constituted by "misplaced patriotism" (Morris 122-23). The story "expresses a deep psychological trauma," and the central character "becomes automatized, part of the military machine" (Solomon 150-51). This is a tale in which "the tragedy of the Civil War in splitting up families into enemy factions is unforgettably etched" (Joshi 46), and in which we "read of nothing but the minutest details of bodily and mental pain" ("Novels of the Week"). H. E. Bates asserts that "the famous A Horseman in the Sky' alone would put him [Bierce] into the front rank of all commentators on the futility of war" (50). Bierce himself joined the Union army in April 1861. Although he fought heroically for the United States, the internecine war was very traumatic for him. As a result, he became an antiwar writer, famous for his bitter irony against the horrifying, cruel, irrational, and inhuman nature of war. "A Horseman in the Sky" is a representative work among Bierce's war stories that convey with bitter irony "a fatalistic, defeatist vision of battle in which the noble and the simple-minded alike are consumed, or consume themselves" (Hunter 286). No nineteenth-century American writers "sustained an ironic approach to war so consistently as Bierce did" (Solomon 155). …

Embodied Rhythm in Space and Time: A Poem and a Sculpture

Abstract: In this article, we outline the concept of aesthetic rhythm as an embodied lived experience. We investigate the temporal rhythms of a poem by Seamus Heaney and the spatial rhythms of a sculpture by Lena Hopsch, discussing similarities and differences between the two modalities. Previous research on aesthetic rhythm has mostly focused on meter, but here we use a broader concept of rhythm as we refer to pre-metered forms from classical antiquity. Aesthetic rhythm in an artwork is described as a play with proportions in time and space. Rhythm continuously stages bodily experiences of balance and direction. We develop the embodiment perspective of Maurice Merleau-Ponty as well as Mark Johnson’s concept of image schema. The schemas are shown to be premodal as rhythms function the same in temporal and spatial artworks. We also demonstrate a model for interpretation, developed out of the rhythms of the artifact.

Narrative Practices in Medicine and Therapy: Philosophical Reflections

Abstract: By telling stories to ourselves and others we grow slowly not only to know who we are but also to become who we are --Charon, vii Being a competent narrator matters It matters for understanding and engaging with others, and it also matters for shaping ourselves, to see "live options" and to improve our chances of flourishing and living well The importance of developing narrative skills and their transformative potential is becoming more recognized This article examines two important movements--narrative medicine and narrative therapy--that aim to put narrative practices at the heart of medicine and therapeutic practices It exposes the core assumptions of these movements and identifies ways in which attention to those assumptions can benefit from philosophical clarification and further investigation Taken together these two initiatives are bent on improving the narrative competencies not only of those who care for suffering individuals, but also of suffering individuals themselves, with an eye to improved outcomes The programs of narrative medicine and narrative therapy are united in seeing enhanced narrative skills as a key to better outcomes for health-care practitioners, therapists, and those who are seeking to address persistent problems in their own lives Crucially, the point of these efforts is to enable better results for individuals seeking help and relief Both initiatives are founded on the view that narrative practices play fundamental roles in improving health and mental health Narrative medicine and narrative therapy seek to accomplish this in different ways, by helping us to better understand others and by transforming the prospects for achieving psychosocial well-being, respectively Crucially, the cornerstone of both narrative medicine and narrative therapy is the assumption that becoming skilled in narrative practices--becoming more narratively competent--can transform our ways of interacting and engaging with others, and also making a fundamental difference to what we see the world is offering to us as well as our potential to respond to such offerings This article attempts to lend philosophical support to these narrative-focused movements in health care and therapeutic practice The section "What Is the Story with Narrative Medicine?" introduces the motivating insights that have inspired and driven the narrative medicine movement The section "Rethinking the What and How of Narrative Medicine" takes the analysis two steps further First, it refines our understanding of the goods narrative medicine promises--of what it aims to deliver Second, it asks us to rethink the program narrative medicine uses to instill the relevant narrative competence The section "Narratives in the Scientific Image" considers how attention to patients' narratives yields insight into their attitudes in ways that can help health-care practitioners to understand and thus build trusting relationships with their patients This not only treats patients respectfully but also provides a predictive grip on their medically relevant behaviors The section "What Is the Story with Narrative Therapy?" switches gears and introduces the central tenets of narrative therapy Narrative therapy's ambition is to improve the life skills of patients by enabling them to tell richer life stories The practice raises a puzzling question: how are the remarkable transformations that narrative therapy promises brought about by clients telling more robust stories about their lives? This article concludes by showing that a promising answer is to understand how clients can change their responsiveness to affordances--their possibilities for acting--by enriching the narratives they tell about themselves WHAT IS THE STORY WITH NARRATIVE MEDICINE? There is something rotten in contemporary medical practice, if the proponents of narrative medicine are to be believed According to their diagnosis, today's medical practice is so much in the thrall of dealing with disease efficiently and in evidence-based ways that it has downplayed the human side of the profession …

Narratives and Online Decorum: The Rhetoric of Mark Zuckerberg's Personal Storytelling on Facebook

Abstract: With stories as with language, the truly personal exists only as a theoretical construct. Both classical and more recent research on everyday storytelling activities demonstrate how even the most intimate and personal narratives come into being through the reuse of existing culturally established and culturally circulating plot patterns, causal sequences, value schemes, and more or less codified formal features. As evidenced by other articles in this volume, the reliance of everyday storytelling on preexisting cultural material, be it invented or referential, fictional or factual, remains a rich and important area of investigation when trying to understand how narrative sense-making operates at the level of personal narratives. This article addresses this nexus of personal narratives and cultural material, but the focus is less on how existing contexts and practices feed into personal storytelling, and more on how personal storytelling may attempt to influence and possibly change such cultural material and habits. Although there is nothing new about an interest in the rhetorical side of personal storytelling--considering how narratives function in an interpersonal setting as motivators or persuasive devices--I argue that the specific type of purposeful storytelling examined in the following pages exhibits pervasive yet understudied forms and functions. Rather than try to influence or move a specific audience in a specific situation, this type of personal narrative seems set on modifying existing constellations of cultural norms and values. More specifically, I examine Mark Zuckerberg's personal storytelling on Facebook, to demonstrate how it engages with the norms of appropriate behavior online or--to use the central term of this article--decorum online. Although a substantial amount of research has been devoted to understanding the cultural impact of Facebook as a platform for intra- and interpersonal activities, including storytelling, not much systematic attention has been paid to how one of the biggest facilitators of human communication itself communicates (Dijck being a notable exception). An important element of Facebook's communication is the personal profile of Facebook CEO and founder, Zuckerberg, a profile that, like most profiles on Facebook, contains massive amounts of everyday storytelling activity. The aim of the article is to investigate how Zuckerberg uses personal storytelling to approach matters of online decorum or appropriate speech. The main point is that an important feature of his personal narratives is their meta-decorous nature: Often, Zuckerberg's posts are also about what posting is or should be, and therefore also about what it may be, or should mean, to be someone posting on Facebook. Consequently, these personal stories take on a peculiar status as amalgamations of the personal, the strategic, and the moral. In order to contextualize the reading of Zuckerberg's narratives, I begin by discussing how Facebook and cultural values intermingle, which I then combine with ideas on decorum. Very briefly, I first outline my approach and how it relates to other recent takes on interpersonal aspects of personal storytelling. Going at least as far back as William Labov's groundbreaking work (Language) on how regular people tell stories about events from their own life, questions regarding the forms and functions of personal storytelling have occupied a central position in several of the so-called narrative turns (Hyvarinen). A string of disciplines has zoomed in on the connections between autobiographical storytelling practices and sense-making, spawning different sets of operational methodological tools and theoretical concepts. Among the more prominent examples are phenomenological and hermeneutical investigations of how the concordances and discordances of emplotment tie in to what may be called narrative identity (Ricoeur), ideas about the interactional, dynamic, and collaborative aspects of spontaneous oral storytelling (Ochs and Capps), work on how narratives foster and challenge identity construction through the act of positioning (Bamberg), ideas of the importance that should be given to small story material (Georgakopoulou, "Small Stories"), the connections between health and individual storytelling (Charon), the connections between storytelling practices and social media (Page), and the connections between everyday narratives and the imagination (Andrews). …

Hauntings of Human Nature: An Evolutionary Critique of King's the Shining

Abstract: Stephen King's 1977 novel The Shining is one of the most well-known horror stories of all time, and the author is the world's most successful horror writer. King has published about seventy books, which have sold around 350 million copies according to one estimate (Hough), and his books have been translated into about fifty languages (Lilja). King has won a staggering number of awards and prizes, most prestigiously the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2003. Ever since his debut with Carrie in 1974, King's work has attracted praise as well as hostility from critics (Magistrale, "Why"), but evidently his stories resonate with a very large number of people across the world. There are many reasons for King's popularity. He writes in an accessible, colloquial style. His plots are eventful and dramatic, and he engages unashamedly with big and basic themes such as good versus evil. His characters tend to be ordinary, recognizable people, but they are depicted in psychological complexity and with genuine compassion as they face very dire straits, whether from each other or from supernatural monsters. Moreover, King's brand of supematuralism--transcendent moral forces that manifest themselves, usually, as traditional horror figures such as malevolent ghosts and evil monsters--has wide appeal because it resonates with people's intuitive beliefs about invisible, morally polarized supernatural agents who exert influence on the material world. And finally, the worldview that emerges from King's fiction contains an unflinching acknowledgment of pain and suffering and evil in the world, yet tempers that acknowledgment with a romantic, sometimes sentimental, celebration of the human potential for good. That combination of hard-nosed realism and moral affirmation is attractive to many readers because, while not descending into nihilism, it seems to capture a difficult but important truth about the harshness of the world. All of those elements are prominent in The Shining, King's third published novel, his first bestseller (Magistrale, Stephen King), and one of his most enduringly popular works. The Shining tells the story of Jack Torrance, a bright and sympathetic man with literary ambitions, a volatile temper, and a drinking problem. He has recently lost his job teaching high school because he lost his temper and assaulted a student. His marriage to Wendy has been troubled ever since he, in a drunken fury, accidentally broke the arm of their now five-year-old son, Danny. A well-connected friend helps him get a job as the winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, an upscale resort in the Rocky Mountains. Jack accepts the position, seeing it and its forced sobriety as a last chance at rescuing his marriage and his faltering literary career. Danny, who has clairvoyant abilities--the "shine"--is tormented by horrifying visions. He senses that something bad is going to happen at the Overlook. When the family arrives at the hotel just before it closes down for the winter, the cook, Hallorann, pulls Danny aside. Hallorann also has the shine, sees in Danny a fellow psychic, and warns him that the hotel is haunted--particularly room 217--but says that the ghosts cannot harm him. Hallorann is right about the hotel being haunted, but wrong about their capacity to hurt Danny. There is an evil, supernatural force at the Overlook, a supernatural accumulation of the atrocities perpetrated by the Overlook's past owners and inhabitants--gangsters, petty criminals, and ruthless businessmen. That evil force is fed by Danny's psychic powers and becomes stronger until Danny is attacked by a zombie woman in room 217. He manages to escape. Danny and Wendy desperately want to leave the hotel, but they are snowed in, with no connection to the outside world because Jack has destroyed their radio and disabled their snowmobile. He refuses to acknowledge any danger and has no wish to leave the hotel and face unemployment and humiliation. …

Her "whole soul was ear": Novel Sound, Experimental Music, and Artistic Community in Mary Shelley's The Last Man

Abstract: Composed after the destruction of her beloved circle of family and friends, Mary Shelley's The Last Man conducts readers through a narrative heretofore unrecognized as exceedingly experimental This essay argues that Shelley incorporates a language of sound and music into The Last Man to amplify the intellectual and emotional resonance of her highly inventive novel It begins by examining the musical musings in Shelley's journals and letters in the months surrounding The Last Man 's inception, suggesting these forays as origins of innovations that find ultimate expression in the novel Next, close readings of The Last Man 's musical metaphors and sonically themed references solidify music as a textual hermeneutic and as a metaphor for artistic community inside and outside the world of the novel This essay concludes that Shelley's text incorporates elements of written musical scores Shelley's unique novel thus unites the language of narrative with the language of written music

How to Build a Metaphor: Novel Metaphors Construed by Concrete Elements in Tomas Tranströmer's Poetry

Abstract: In the first linguistic study on Nobel laureate Tomas Transtromer’s poetry, a hypothesis generated from earlier research in literature was tested on poems where Transtromer makes use of concreteness to a high degree. In addition, a comparison corpus was created, consisting of poems by authors who share important common traits with Transtromer. The results did not support the hypothesis, as the comparison corpus also showed a high degree of concreteness. However, in contrast to the comparison corpus, Transtromer’s poems exhibit no verbal processes among their verbs, which contribute to a heavier expression. Moreover, when investigating the metaphors, an unparalleled quality was revealed. The majority of Transtromer’s novel metaphors are constructed solely by concrete elements. In contrast to the claim that concreteness in metaphors explains the world (Lakoff and Johnson), Transtromer seems to show, through many of his metaphors, how wondrous the world is, thereby creating ostranenie “defamiliarization” (Shklovsky).

Lady Chatterley's Gamekeeper

Abstract: There is nothing in D. H. Lawrence’s novel about catching poachers, controlling predators, and most of the gamekeeper’s work. Focusing on Connie and Mellors’ relationship, Lawrence does not describe the keeper’s professional chores. But the most crucial scene in the novel, which takes place when Connie and Mellors handle the pheasant chicks that he is raising, arouses our curiosity about what Mellors actually does when he is not having sexual relations with Connie. Since we no longer have the knowledge of gamekeepers that Lawrence’s readers had in the 1920s, a thorough account of Mellors’ duties—which roots him to the land, provides essential background, and deepens our understanding of the gamekeeper’s character—explains Connie’s attraction to him and enhances the meaning of the novel.

"Softened" Voice Quality in Poetry Reading: An Acoustic Study

Abstract: This study explores the acoustic properties of a certain “softened” voice quality adopted by some professional poetry readers for emotive expression. We show that several acoustic features may serve as cues for softened voice, including: breathy voice, low intensity, and, possibly, reduced tempo and restrained dynamics of intensity and pitch contours. In addition, we show that different speakers may achieve the effect of voice softening in different ways. Our results demonstrate the contribution of the vocal dimension to the experience of poetry. Although this is essentially a case study of the subjective perceptions of one individual, the results are consistent, and we show their potential to be generalized across listeners.

Delving into the Narratological "Toolbox": Concepts and Categories in Narrative Theory

Abstract: One of the most common ways to characterize narrative theory is that it offers a "toolbox" for the analysis of narratives I find this to be an egregiously banal dead metaphor, but what is interesting is how the prevalence of this metaphor tells us much about the disciplinary aspirations of narratology itself This is because every time the narratological toolbox is invoked it operates as a methodological or metadisciplinary statement Hence, in this article I plan to trace different uses of the metaphor to establish how narratology has constructed its disciplinary history and situated itself in relation to broader directions in literary and cultural studies, before addressing some of the paradoxes and limitations the reliance on this metaphor give rise to, particularly revolving around the role of interpretation Ultimately, I hope to clarify our understanding of the methodological procedures involved in narratological analysis by suggesting the importance of distinguishing between theoretical concepts and formalist categories This will lead to a discussion of ontological levels in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses in relation to the question of fictionality Narratology, as we know, has traditionally distinguished itself by its theoretical focus on the deep structure of narratives, on the construction of a grammar of narrative, on the search for what features constitute any and only narratives However, we know it has often been and continues to be perceived as an abstract theoretical enterprise characterized by a neologizing obsession with formalist categories To counteract these perceptions, narratologists often promote the export value of narrative theory in terms of the transferable utility of its method And here is where the metaphor of the "toolbox" becomes important The metaphor invites us to imagine the theoretical edifice of narratology as in fact a kind of practical hands-on enterprise, busily developing a number of concepts and categories that we can use when working on a narrative So, for instance, in the online resource Narratology: A Guide to the Theory of Narrative, Manfred Jahn writes: "This chapter builds a toolbox of basic narratological concepts and shows how to put it to work in the analysis of fiction" What gives the metaphor its ostensible dynamism, and hence its importance to the discipline, is that, like the iPhone, the toolbox can always get bigger and better There are three broad reasons typically offered for tinkering with the toolbox: (1) We need to refine existing tools, especially when we encounter new narratives upon which the tools do not work For instance, Gerald Prince, in the collection Analyzing World Fiction, argues that if a multicultural text "involved narrative features that the toolkit supplied by classical narratology (or a richer and more powerful postclassical narratology) did not envisage and was unable to handle The kit should be modified so as to accommodate these features" (38) Or we might see the value of other disciplinary paradigms such as cognitive science for conceptualizing our tools, which is what Jahn does in his essay "The Mechanics of Focalization: Extending the Narratological Toolbox" (2) We need to produce new tools, especially if we want to expand our object of study to include a whole range of different media In "On the Theoretical Foundations of Transmedial Narratology," Marie-Laure Ryan offers a critique of radical media relativism, pointing out that this approach insists upon the unique qualities of each medium, "thereby forcing the theorist to rebuild the analytical toolbox of narratology from scratch for every medium" (3), which of course no one wants to do The ideal, then, is a toolbox designed for all narratives, and one important tool here is the concept of storyworlds In the introduction to Storyworlds Across Media, Ryan and Jan Noel-Thon write: "Whether logical or imaginative, however, the concept of storyworld will only earn a legitimate place in the toolbox of narratology if it opens new perspectives on the relations between media and narrative" (5) …

Eighteenth-Century Allusions in Henry Esmond

Abstract: Thackeray is one of the most successful pasticheurs in the language, so accomplished in his evocation of the eighteenth century that we are barely conscious of the mechanisms by which he achieves success in the field. This article examines some of the ways in which he achieves a period color in Henry Esmond through an habitual aurea mediocritas in his judgments of character and also by judiciously blending eighteenth-century allusions (to The Rape of the Lock and Gray’s “Ode to Adversity” among them) into the texture of his prose.

"Play, utopia or anguish"?: Accounting for the Persistence of the Discourse against Slander from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period

Abstract: From the Middle Ages to the early modern period, a great number of treatises condemning abuses of the tongue were published in England. Slander in particular was harshly criticized, as it was deemed a formidable threat to the order of society. So far, scholarship on slander and the evils of the tongue has emphasized the transformation of the discourse against detraction, arguing that it was progressively secularized and feminized. This essay aims at reassessing these conclusions and showing on the contrary the continuity of the discourse against slander over the centuries, even as defamation as a criminal offence was undergoing considerable changes in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English law and courts. Thus, the essay addresses the discrepancy between the discourse on slander and the general context of defamation sued at court in early modern England. What eventually emerges is the hermeneutic and historical relevance of continuity in early modern studies against the desire to look for signs of modernity.

A Reading in Temporal Poetics: Wallace Steven's "Domination of Black"

Abstract: Poetry is formal. Rhythm and form are closely related. Rhythm is componential. Form is paradigmatic. The qualities of the rhythmic components are the source of formal paradigms. Poetic paradigms are quadratic, organizing linguistic, rhetorical, and symbolic forms into four temporalities (cyclical time, centroidal time, linear time, and relative time) following the four components of rhythm (meter, grouping, prolongation, and theme). I call this approach to poetry “temporal poetics.” Using this “temporal poetics,” this essay reads a poem by Wallace Stevens, “Domination of Black.”

Readings in Temporal Poetics: Four Poems by William Carlos Williams

Abstract: In the spirit and tradition of Roman Jakobson's great poetic analyses, the four analyses in this essay are just presented as readings of individual poems, using another theoretical framework, one that I have been developing for the last twenty years, in part, in response to Jakobson In my temporal poetics, I derive a theory of poetic form, including linguistic, rhetorical, and symbolic form, from rhythm My theory of rhythm is componential Form is paradigmatic The qualities of the four rhythmic components (meter, grouping, prolongation, and theme) are the source of formal paradigms The qualities of the four rhythmic components present a kind of developmental, and then constitutive, neo-Hegelian dialectic, based on rhythm (1) The Young Housewife At 10 am the young housewife moves about in negligee behind the wooden walls of her husband's house I pass solitary in my car Then again she comes to the curb to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands shy, uncorseted, tucking in stray ends of hair, and I compare her to a fallen leaf The noiseless wheels of my car rush with a crackling sound over dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling --William Carlos Williams (57) (2) Narratively, "The Young Housewife" presents a familiar scene in Williams' poetry Riding to work alone in his car, the speaker catches a glimpse of some slice of everyday life, which then provides the material for imaginative exploration and reflection (and poetic composition and expression) Like a camera, poems of this sort freeze and frame some bit of reality and make it into art Because of this analogy to photography, I like to call these texts "snapshot" poems In "snapshot" poems, linear and relative time dominate the poetic texture Compared to what we might expect, linear forms, emblematic of reality (the prosaic and mundane), are both formalized (ie, made into symbols) and relativized (ie, particularized, negated, loosened, fragmented, questioned, made simultaneous and/or multidimensional, etc), lifted up into the imagination In this "snapshot" poem, a half-dressed, disheveled housewife, is seen, first, moving around in her house, and then, running out to the curb to flag down the neighborhood vendors (ie, "the ice-man," "the fish-man") Passing in his car, the speaker notes various details of her character ("shy"), appearance ("in negligee," "uncorseted"), environment ("at 10 am," "behind the wooden walls of her husband's house," "dried leaves"), and actions ("tucking in stray ends of hair") Before "rushing" by, the speaker "bows," "smiles," and "compares" her to a "fallen leaf" In its symbolic resonances, the details of this "scene" give us the mind and manner of the poem's "characters" The speaker, as poet, uses poetic detail to express his inner life Then he projects this inner life imaginatively onto the woman, too, putting the two in the same subject position (if not in the same bed!) On one hand, both the speaker and the woman are confined to reality and social convention The speaker is constrained by his work schedule and its duties, symbolized by the (practical aspects of the speaker's) "passing" "car" and the "crackling" "sound" of its "wheels" over the "leaves," all emblems of linear time The woman is similarly confined to reality and social convention, symbolized by her life as a "housewife" "in" "her husband's house," and her action of "tucking in" her disheveled hair This social constraint is expressed by other linear forms in the text, too, for instance, the narrative/ temporal structure of the discourse as a whole ("At 10 am," "Then again") and the text's dense consonance ([d]: "behind"-"wooden"-"husband's"-"stands""ends"-"sound"-"dried"; [s]: "pass"-"noiseless"-"housewife"-"ice-man"-"pass"; [z]: "leaves"-"noiseless"-"wheels"-"ends"-"comes"-"walls"-"husband's"-"moves"; [f]: "leaf"-"housewife"; [n]: "behind"-"husband's"-"Then"-"again"-"ice-man" -"fish-man"-"stands"-"ends"-"fallen"-"sound"; [s]: "fish-man"-"rush") …

Moral Affects through "Wind" and "Bone": Reading W. H. Auden's "Refugee Blues"

Abstract: “Refugee Blues,” a poem written on the eve of WWII by W. H. Auden, addresses the serious Jewish refugee problems by evoking in its reader the intense effects of poignancy, apprehension, and compassion. The author would argue that the enduring artistic and humanistic values lie in its moral affects accomplished through artistic manipulations of its “wind” (form and style) and “bone” (moral theme). Driven by his moral conscience, Auden attempted to use his art to affect the public in order to call for a change in refugee policy by asylum countries. This affect-driven thematic-cum-stylistic reading aims to reveal the important and complex relationship between Auden’s larger social-moral concern and the minutiae of the work’s sensuous forms, such as genre, diction, repetition, sound devices, syntax, and figures. A prime example of early Auden’s canon, “Refugee Blues” witnesses Auden’s deliberate effort in exercising the rhetorical power of poetry to save civilisation in the historical as well as literary context.

Introduction to Ethical Literary Criticism by Nie Zhenzhao (review)

Abstract: Nie Zhenzhao Introduction to Ethical Literary Criticism Beijing: Peking UP, 2014 When Nie Zhenzhao proposed ethical literary criticism about a decade ago, Chinese critics were just troubled by a lack of their own theoretical discourse Against this background, Nie's efforts were rather significant The years' work yields a comprehensive theoretical framework and a set of core concepts and arguments, which are exemplified in Nie's new work, Introduction to Ethical Literary Criticism The book, composed of two parts and appendixes, namely, basic theories of ethical literary criticism, the application of these theories to text analysis, and the list of its terms and their definitions, seeks to illuminate the working mechanisms of ethical literary criticism and its terminology such as ethical taboo, ethical environment, ethical knot, ethical line, ethical identity, ethical confusion, Sphinx factor, human factor, animal factor, rational will, irrational will, natural will, and free will The first part of the book begins with a discussion of the origin of literature from an ethical perspective Regarding the origin of literature, there are a number of critical theories dealing with it, such as the mimetic theory, the cathartic theory, and Labor Theory So far, the most influential one has been Labor Theory conceptualized by Frederick Engels, who argues that literature, or arts in a broad sense, has originated from human labor Unlike Engels, Nie forcefully argues that labor is just one of the conditions for human beings to produce arts Therefore, in his opinion, literature is not the product of labor, but "a product of morality," or "a unique expression of morality in a given historical period" and it is "fundamentally an art of ethics" Nie then defines ethical literary criticism as "a critical theory that approaches literary works on the basis of their ethical essence and educational function from the perspective of ethics" (13) In this part, Nie also draws a distinction between ethical literary criticism and moral criticism In Nie's conceptual system, moral criticism lays much emphasis on "good or bad evaluation of a given literary work from today's moral principles" (128), while the goal of ethical literary criticism is to uncover ethical factors that bring literature into existence and the ethical elements that affect characters and events in literary works, thus examining the ethical values of a given work with reference to a particular historical context or a period of time in which the text under discussion is written To illuminate this issue, Nie uses Shakespeare's Hamlet as an example According to moral criticism, the influential interpretations are a play about "character tragedy" and that about "Oedipus complex" (130) However, from the perspective of ethical literary criticism, readers might find that it is "a tragedy about ethical dilemma aroused by the change of Hamlet's ethical identity" (133) A big breakthrough in the first part is the discussion about biological selection and ethical section Nie points out "the biggest problem for mankind to solve is to make a choice between the identities of animals and the identities of human beings" (32) The theory of biological selection by Darwin and the argument of labor assumption by Engels are regarded to be forceful in differentiating human beings from animals, yet, in Nie's view, "both Darwin and Engels failed to make a fundamental distinction between man and animals though explained where human beings have come from" (34) With reference to Darwin's concept of biological selection, Nie places much emphasis on its counterpart: ethical selection Biological selection, for Nie, is only the first step to help human being to be who they are in a biological sense "What truly differentiates human beings from animals is the second step, ethical selection" (35), which helps to endow human beings with reason and ethical consciousness, and thus eventually turns them into ethical beings …

The Suffusion of the Televisual in The Crying of Lot 49

Abstract: To say that technological media play a prominent role in the narrative of The Crying of Lot 49 is to state the obvious The thematic importance of media systems within the novel is apparent to any attentive reader, and such a substantial portion of the voluminous body of criticism that has been written on the novel deals with this topic that one feels hard pressed to bring anything to the conversation that has not already been said in so many words Still, there is one aspect of the novel's engagement with media that has yet to receive the critical emphasis it deserves: its pervasive televisuality Television looms large in the novel from the very beginning, when Oedipa Maas, having just discovered that she is going to be executor of the estate of her former lover Pierce Inverarity, stands "in the living room, stared at by the greenish dead eye of the TV tube" (1) It continues to play a formative role throughout, at times explicitly through the content of the narrative, but also in a subtler way, by providing the text with a shape and a model The novel's structure adapts a range of uniquely televisual experiences into textual ones, foregoing the more traditional pleasures of reading in the process Although critics have often made reference to the novel's explicit treatment of television alongside its treatment of other forms of communication and dissemination media, it is to be my contention that television as the novel engages with it is not one instance of a technological medium among others but rather the ultimate technological medium through which all the others must be understood, including the medium of the novel itself A main critical line on Thomas Pynchon's overall attitude toward television is best exemplified by the approach taken in Kathleen Fitzpatrick's The Anxiety of Obsolescence: The American Novel in the Age of Television, which focuses on the ways in which Pynchon's novels endeavor to close themselves off and distance themselves from the televisual in order to shore up the distinction between popular and high art media According to Fitzpatrick, Pynchon and some of his like-minded contemporaries have used their writing to perpetuate a two-sided narrative about the role of media in post-modern American culture On one side are the high-tech media of sight and sound, a proliferating network of signals that threatens individualist subjectivity with its vastness and homogeneity Television is usually figured as the primary aggressor or technological medium par excellence here, with radio, the telephone, film, photography, and the mainstream press acting as its accomplices On the other side is the supposedly marginalized (despite being white and male) novelist, a protesting, underdog voice scarcely heard over the electronic din of the never-ending audiovisual spectacle This posturing is both strategic and in bad faith Paradoxically, by painting a picture of a media landscape in which the novel is a fading relic and newer media are the usurpers of its role as cultural arbiter, the art novel is able to maintain its identity as a distinctive and morally superior medium The feigned death that this cadre of literary novelists continually acts out constitutes the interior logic of their survival, their renewed livelihood through martyrdom Fitzpatrick's argument represents a school of thought that I do not intend to oppose here Rather, I hope to compliment and extend the work that readings such as hers have done toward explicating the relationship between the postwar American novel and television, a relationship that remains under-theorized despite many attempts (1) The qualification I would like to append to this argument is that it leaves unaddressed what seems to me to be the more formative dimension of the relationship between television and at least some of the novels that are so invested in critiquing it This is because, while the argument accounts for the logic that sustains these pseudo-marginalized art novels qua art novel, it fails to address what makes them viable as novels …

Marie-Laure Ryan, in collaboration with Kenneth Foote and Maoz Azaryahu. Narrating Space/Spatializing Narrative: Where Narrative Theory and Geography Meet

Abstract: Marie-Laure Ryan, in collaboration with Kenneth Foote and Maoz Azaryahu. Narrating Space/Spatializing Narrative: Where Narrative Theory and Geography Meet. Ohio State UP, 2016. 312 pp. Paper $39.95. ISBN: 978-0-81425-263-5. PDF eBook $19.95. ISBN: 978-0-81427-407-1. The title of this book well represents both the aim of the authors and the final outcome: the meeting of two disciplines, narratology and geography, in the cross-fertilization through bidirectional movement of tools, concepts, and problems. It does not, however, reveal either the full identity of the book or the leitmotiv that glues it together; it is a book about maps and it is itself a map, a map of remapping two disciplines by proposing "space as a key concept for narrative theory, and narrative as a key concept for geography" (225). It shares a lot of properties (both limiting and promising) with maps, partly because of the close affinity of geography with cartography, and partly because narratology is perceived by the authors as similar to cartography: the former recognizes and makes note only of particular properties of the terrain, the latter is "not the interpretation of individual works but the exploration of regularities found in multiple narrative texts"--those regularities obviously need a distance to be perceivable, a distance of a map. Let us start with the all-encompassing view of the book, scale: 1:50,000,000. It could be divided in two parts, conceptualizing two motions: first--from geography to narrative; second--from narratology to geography. In the first part, Marie-Laure Ryan examines the topic of space in narrative theory, the role maps play as both extra- and intra-diegetic entities, the usability of the concept of mental maps for narratology, and various functions of space in digital media, particularly "forms of spatiality and ... how they lead to new narrative genres and narrative experiences" (11). In the second part, Kenneth Foote and Maoz Azaryahu propose to develop what they perceive as a neglected field of inquiry, namely the narratology of spatial narratives--stories "positioned in the environment. . . sign-posted and draped across cities, historical sites, and everyday environments" (138) and; consequently, they discuss the narrativity of street names, historical and heritage sites, and museum exhibitions. The last--extremely valuable--chapter brings together two perspectives and proposes questions and research aims for the future narrative geography and geographical narratology. Medium scale, let us say 1:800,000, allows us to see particular chapters. The one entitled "Narrative Theory and Space" provides a "common narratological background" (8) for the rest of the book. Ryan analyzes both "the textual strategies through which space is presented in narrative" and "the spatial categories that underlie [the story's] semantics" (18). The reader is guided through a rich--though fragmented and scattered--tradition of literary research on space (from Bachtin, Stanzel, and Lotman to Lakoff and Johnson and Deleuze and Guattari) and introduced to distinctions grounded in geographical tradition. Particularly compelling in their simplicity and usefulness are a distinction between a map and a tour (borrowed from Linde and Labov) understood as "global structuring principles of narrative space" (31) and between strategic versus symbolic design, which enables Ryan to argue convincingly (albeit cursorily) with Stanzel's identifications of perspectivist description with third-person narrative and aperspectivist with first-person. Two chapters, "Maps and Narrative" and "From Cognitive to Graphic Maps," read as one coherent argument. The bidirectional movement is repeated on a medium scale: we are presented with maps that are parts of narratives and with narratives that take a form of maps. In the spirit of media-conscious narratology, Ryan asks about the media specificity of narrative maps and limits the type of stories that can be successfully represented through maps: "It takes a narrative based on a steady progression through space to lend itself to this type of spatio-temporal representation" (69). …

Narrating Selves in Everyday Contexts: Art, the Literary, and Life Experience

Abstract: Narrative sense making draws resources from cultural expectations, narrative conventions, and generic models In narrative--just as in life experience--"[t]he coincidental, unexpected, experimental, even the chaotic, are all necessary and integral aspects" (Hyvarinen et al 9) And the imagination plays a vital role in how we devise and tell our stories (Andrews) For these reasons, making sense of and communicating experiences are necessarily modified by culturally existing models, and people draw on the literary and the artistic in their everyday storytelling and self-expression What is more, our everyday involvement with social and other media confronts us with stories and storytelling opportunities in ways that blur the boundaries between living one's life and sharing and co-constructing experiences and values This special issue explores the literary and artistic in everyday narratives across a wide range of contexts: new media, medicine and therapy, social work, and oral history It looks at various case studies of incidentally occurring storytelling practices and the (auto)biographical processes manifest in these practices The contributions ask: how is a sense of narrative self constituted and negotiated in different mediatized environments? What are the culturally available stories and modes of narration for sharing our experience? How do different narrative techniques enable us to represent and communicate our own experience and that of another? By paying attention to the interplay between narrative form, story content, and wider situational or cultural contexts of social interaction, these contributions demonstrate the broad relevance of both narrative and narrative analysis The six articles address a number of questions pivotal in narrative theory and crucial to practices based on a narrative understanding of the self These include the relation between culturally available grand narratives and mundane, interactional small stories (Georgakopoulou), between historical accuracy and narrative imagination, between living a life and telling about it, and between the personal and the social in storytelling practices (see also Schiff et al) Furthermore, we explore how everyday storytelling practices are related both to the larger, more encompassing conception of a narrative we typically call our "autobiography" or someone else's life story-that is, the difference between "small" and "big" stories, as Bamberg calls them Each article reflects on these major questions both theoretically and through the analysis of a specific test case These analyses test the applicability and adaptability of theoretical models and analytical methods in transdisciplinary narrative studies The first article by Daniel D Hutto, Nicolle Brancazio, and Jarrah Aubourg offers an insightful overview of Narrative Medicine and Narrative Practice with the aim to lend those practices a strong philosophical support Hutto, et al demonstrate the importance of narrative to psychological reality, and the vitality to engage in second person storytelling practices to learn and develop a person's narrative abilities Therefore, it is a misunderstanding to prefer past accuracy over a future trajectory, or to juxtapose unfavorably disjointed reality with plotted narratives in any effort to maintain and improve mental well-being Narrative skills are shown to be crucial to having better resources and responsiveness in life Whereas the article by Hutto et al focuses on the large frame and philosophical ground for narrative practices in medicine and therapy, the article by Anneke Sools, Sofia Triliva, and Theofanis Filippas investigates a case study of unemployed Greek young adults with a view to exploring narrative futuring This approach is grounded in the insight that gaining new experiences requires differentiating between past and future What is more, in order to facilitate change, an imagined future needs to be both desired and believable, which requires narrative construction and communication …