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Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film
31 May 1980-
About: The article was published on 1980-05-31 and is currently open access. It has received 1885 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Narrative structure & Narrative criticism.
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TL;DR: The role of time in the narrative of the Mass Effect games has been discussed in this article, where tools derived from narratological approaches to literature are used to describe the temporal ordering of events.
Abstract: This article discusses the role of time in the narrative of the Mass Effect games, employing tools derived from narratological approaches to literature. On the level of the story line, time functions as the engine of the narrative arc by opposing cyclical and linear temporality. On the level of the storyworld, characters and the narrative universe are endowed with a temporal extension into past and present beyond the scope of the main story line, which increases player immersion. On the meta-narrative plane of possible worlds, the player has considerable control not only over the decisions the main character takes but also the order in which events occur—as such, the player oversees an important part of the narrative itself.
12 citations
Dissertation•
31 May 2008
TL;DR: The authors analyzed Easy Rawlins' gradual formation of identity throughout the ten novels from when he is nineteen in Gone Fishin' (1997) until he is forty six years old in Cinnamon Kiss (2005) and found that there are three main aspects that shape Easy's subjectivity: his role as a detective, his post-colonial consciousness as a black man raised in a society dominated by whites, and finally, his attachment and defense of a strong African American culture.
Abstract: This thesis analyzes the work of Walter Mosley. This reappropriates the detective conventions to represent the American society of the 1950s and 1960s from an African American perspective. He creates a black private eye, Easy Rawlins, whose profile mirrors that of his white counterparts but also subverts it. This thesis studies Raymond Chandler's canonical work "The Simple Art of Murder" and establish those traits that characterize Easy Rawlins. Likewise, it compares Mosley and Chester Himes' black detective heroes and highlights the traits that they have in common. Secondly, focusing on the perspective on identity, consciousness, and subjectivity of black scholars such as Stuart Hall, bell hooks, Cornel West, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and W.E.B. Du Bois, along with the post-colonial approach of critics such as Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin, Robert Young, and Homi Bhabha among others, it provides the necessary concepts to discuss Easy's profile from a post-colonial angle. Easy Rawlins' gradual formation of identity throughout the ten novels can be analyzed from when he is nineteen in Gone Fishin' (1997) until he is forty six years old in Cinnamon Kiss (2005). Evidently, his development is affected by the different personal situations he has to go through, and the historical time that he happens to live as a black man through the 50s and the 60s. The subject is culturally and socially constructed, and Easy is no exception. Although cultural codes are shared and human beings live together, every individual is an independent self with a unique perspective and a single first-person ontology. In Easy's case, this thesis argues that there are three main aspects that shape the character's subjectivity: his role as a detective, his post-colonial consciousness as a black man raised in a society dominated by whites, and finally, his attachment and defense of a strong African American culture.
12 citations
01 Jan 1988
TL;DR: In this article, an affect-based model of literary narratives is outlined, in which it is argued that three properties of affect are implicated in story understanding: self-reference, anticipation, and domain-crossing.
Abstract: Literary narratives are primarily about people, their experiences, behaviour and goals, and about relationships between people. Recent studies in social cognition have suggested that affect is the primary medium in which social episodes and information about the self are represented. It is argued that theories of text processing that adopt an information processing model are overlooking a key component in how we respond to narrative. The affective modes by which we understand people and ourselves may direct the information processing aspects of story response. An affect-based model of literary narrative is outlined in this paper, in which it is argued that three properties of affect are implicated in story understanding: self-reference, anticipation, and domain-crossing. By their means, affect plays a constructive role in guiding response to ambiguities and conflicts at the level of schemata. Two empirical studies are reported which provide support for the model.
12 citations
01 Jan 2011
TL;DR: This paper argued that a narrative approach to deliberative democracy can realize its commitment to reasoned justification, while preserving the significance of differing perspectives and promoting mutual understanding, arguing that the aim of improving understanding across political differences could be achieved if our conception of legitimate democratic discourse were broadened to include a significant role for narrative.
Abstract: The theory of deliberative democracy is an answer to a familiar democratic problem. Democracy means ‘the rule of the people,’ but the people are routinely divided about what to do, not only for reasons of interest, but also on grounds of moral principle. Where groups find a law morally objectionable, they are not easily viewed as the authors of that law, in the manner apparently required by the democratic ideal of self-governance. Deliberative democrats have argued that democracy requires citizens to seek consensus, using a familiar style of principle-based moral argument. However, critics like Iris Young object that deliberative democracy’s favoured model of reasoning is inadequate for resolving deep value conflicts. She and others have suggested that the aim of improving understanding across political differences could be achieved if our conception of legitimate democratic discourse were broadened to include a significant role for narrative. The question is whether such a revision would amount to abandoning the deliberative democratic goal of seeking reasonable resolutions of value conflict. This thesis argues that a narrative approach to deliberative democracy can realize its commitment to reasoned justification, while preserving the significance of differing perspectives and promoting mutual understanding. Chapters One and Two review and criticize the ideas of major deliberative theorists concerning the nature of agents, social circumstances, and moral reasoning. Chapters Three and Four deal with deliberative democracy’s radical critics, whose insights about a narrative-contextualist approach to reasoning are shown to be promising, despite these theorists’ excessive hostility to liberalconstitutionalist traditions. In Chapters Five and Six, a tradition-based, contextualist approach to moral reasoning is introduced and defended. Chapters Seven and Eight examine the nature, structure, and cognitive content of narrative; compare and contrast narrative with scientific theory; and address objections to the use of narrative in moral argument. Narrative is shown there to fulfil distinct purposes of communication, interpretation, and justification. Chapters Nine and Ten conclude the argument of the thesis, that deliberative democracy can be fruitfully reoriented along narrative-contextualist lines, by illustrating the role of narrative in public debate over issues such as cultural accommodation and historical justice.
12 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used the B.C. series by Johnny Hart to illustrate the problem of graphological arbitrariness of the English language, which is further complicated by substituting the numeral 4 for the grapheme "four".
Abstract: Figure 1 is taken from the B.C. series by Johnny Hart. Clearly the source of the joke is the graphological arbitrariness of the English language, which is further complicated by substituting the numeral 4 for the grapheme ‘four’. The joke can hardly have been communicated as effectively as this in any other way than by making use of the mixed medium of the comic strip. In panel 1 the setting in which the unseen golf-player's tee-off has gone dangerously astray could have been presented in the medium of the written language. In order to do so, however, a number of discrete clauses in a set linear order would have been necessary. The syntactic and semantic structures of those clauses and the order in which they were presented to the reader would have determined the way in which the text is to be decoded and would have guided the reader's interpretative activity in a somewhat different direction. The same can be said of panel3.
12 citations