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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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Dissertation•
01 Dec 2014
TL;DR: De Carvalho's 2003 novel ''Fantasia'' as discussed by the authors parodied Portuguese imagology in order to question its legitimacy, as well as portraying the importance of agency within identity discourse through his manipulation of the reader using subversion.
Abstract: National identity discourse has proliferated since the nineteenth-century, and this has been reflected in the construction and analysis of \(portugalidade\) as Portugal has undergone significant historical and social transformations. This discourse has developed within Portuguese imagology and is consistently based upon the central imagery of the Discoveries. Although there have been changes intended to either support or question the ruling elite, the imperial motif has remained throughout. The end of the Estado Novo and the Portuguese empire means that former identity discourse must be reappraised in an attempt to construct a post-imperial identity. However, even as these notions have come to be deconstructed through the use of irony and parody in postmodern literature, the centrality of the imagery of the Discoveries endures. This is particularly evident in Mario de Carvalho’s 2003 novel \(Fantasia\) \(para\) \(dois\) \(Coroneis\) \(e\) \(uma\) \(Piscina\), where he uses metafictive techniques to analyse contemporary \(portugalidade\). His construction of various characters parodies Portuguese imagology in order to question its legitimacy, as well as portraying the importance of agency within identity discourse through his manipulation of the reader using subversion. This emphasises the necessity of the deconstruction of \(portugalidade\) in order to fully understand its contemporary relevance.
10 citations
03 Nov 2014
TL;DR: The difficulties of designing a coherent narrative with a suitable level of closure while meeting the requirements of the ERP experimental procedures are addressed and the necessity of fine-tuning the highly specific ERP paradigms necessary for the investigation of user experience in interactive narratives and storytelling is stressed.
Abstract: In this article we explore some of the methodological problems related to characterizing cognitive aspects of involvement with interactive narratives using well known EEG/ERP techniques. To exemplify this, we construct an experimental EEG-ERP set-up with an interactive narrative that considers the dialectical relation between suspense and surprise as a function of expectancy, which in turn can be correlated to the P300-ERP component. We address the difficulties of designing a coherent narrative with a suitable level of closure while meeting the requirements of the ERP experimental procedures. We stress the necessity of fine-tuning the highly specific ERP paradigms necessary for the investigation of user experience in interactive narratives and storytelling.
10 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: In this paper, Phelan argues that, in order to get closer to the implied author's norms and better account for the relation among author, narrator, character and audience, it is necessary to integrate style, context of creation, and intertextual comparison into rhetorical criticism.
Abstract: Along with the "narrative turn" in the past several decades, the critical field has been marked by the thriving development of narrative theory and criticism Of the numerous approaches to fictional narrative, the rhetorical (since the 1960s), the feminist (since the 1980s), and the cognitive (since the 1990s) have been the most influential In terms of the rhetorical approach which has been shedding significant light on the relation among the implied author, narrator, character, and audience, Wayne C Booth (1921-2005) and James Phelan (1951-) have successively figured as leaders of its two stages of development, first from the 1960s to the 1980s, and then from the 1990s up to the present Booth and Phelan are respectively representatives of the second and third generations of the neo-Aristotelian Chicago School of criticism Although the latter generations of the neo-Aristotelians differ from the first in significant ways, such as moving from the concern primarily with the poetic (the text) to a concern with the rhetorical (author-audience communication) or with the rhetorical-poetic (Phelan, Experiencing 79-94), in some important aspects they bear the imprint of the first generation as represented by R S Crane (1886-1967) The early neo-Aristotelians, on one hand, marked off their approach from other branches of criticism and, on the other, advocated pluralism or the coexistence of different approaches The disciplinary boundary has enabled the Chicago School to take on its own characteristics and contribute to the study of literature in its unique ways But the boundary has also brought certain limitations There are two self-imposed preclusions that have very much persisted up to the present in the rhetorical study of fictional narrative: first, the preclusion of style or language, and second, the preclusion of the context of creation This essay argues that, in order to get closer to the implied author's norms and better account for the relation among author, narrator, character and audience, it is necessary to integrate style, context of creation, and intertextual comparison into rhetorical criticism Inclusion instead of Exclusion of Style Continuous Exclusion of Style or Language The first generation of Chicago critics followed Aristotle in subordinating literary language to the larger structure of the work in a given genre Indeed, neglecting style or language enabled them to focus on the "architecture" of literary works, or more specifically, to concentrate on "how fully a given poem exemplifies the common structural principles of the genre to which it has been assigned" (Crane, "Introduction" 1-2) Moreover, the early Chicago critics engaged in a fierce polemic against New Critics whose exclusive concern with language and irony they found excessively limiting (see Phelan, Experiencing 79-87) The antagonism of the Chicago School towards the language-oriented New Criticism added to the preclusion of style This tendency was inherited by contemporary rhetorical critics In the afterword to the second edition of The Rhetoric of Fiction (1983), Booth very much insists on his underplaying language or style in the first edition because of "the non-verbal basis of fictional effects" (461) To him, the earlier Chicago critics' development of Aristotle's method provides "the most helpful, least limiting view of character and event--those tough realities that have never submitted happily to merely verbal analysis" (460) He subscribes to Joseph E Baker's view that the "aesthetic surface" of fiction is found, not in words, but in the "world" of character, event, and value "concretely represented and temporally arranged" (Baker 100, qtd in Booth 480) The preclusion of language is reinforced through rhetorical critics' drawing on structuralist narratology Many rhetorical critics today have adopted the narratological distinction between story and discourse (see Shen "Story-Discourse," "Defense") …
10 citations
TL;DR: The authors explored an alternative understanding of storytelling, which has risen with the emergence of new forms of narrative media, particularly with the medium of computer games, and explicate the distinctive logic behind this novel understanding and investigate how this logic differs from prior conceptualizations of narrative.
Abstract: This article explores an alternative understanding of storytelling, which has risen with the emergence of new forms of narrative media, particularly with the medium of computer games. I explicate the distinctive logic behind this novel understanding and investigate how this logic differs from prior conceptualizations of narrative. In the past decades, marginal formats such as the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book and experimental practices like Experience Theatre already tested the concept of narrative as developed once in structuralist narratology. Narrative experiments like these have now become mainstream, story-driven computer games being one of the prime examples. Drawing on recent theories on the distinction between representation and presentation from the fields of media studies and the arts, this article explains the limits of a structuralist approach, and, in the process, develops an additional concept of narrative, more suited for studying the popular story-driven games of today.
10 citations
Cites background from "Story and Discourse: Narrative Stru..."
...The concept of recounting implies that the events expressed (the story) already happened and find themselves re-presented in the present by some discourse, whether verbal, written, pantomimic or any other form of narrative transmission (Chatman 1978)....
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01 Jan 2018
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors outline some of the key ideas and concepts in narrative theory, in order to make the field more accessible to those who have only a passing acquaintance with it (complexity scientists in particular).
Abstract: The aim of this chapter is to outline some of the key ideas and concepts in narrative theory, in order to make the field more accessible to those who have only a passing acquaintance with it (complexity scientists in particular). The chapter first gives an account of what narrative is, and then goes on to draw out some of the implications of that account for the way we think and understand in narrative terms. My discussion of these implications draws attention, as opportunity arises, to respects in which the form of narrative bears upon our ability to understand and communicate the way complex systems behave. The chapter does not survey the many facets of the problematic relation between narrative sensemaking and complex systems (that is really the work of the book as a whole), but it does provide a reasonably solid theoretical underpinning for the narrative problems, questions and possibilities taken up in subsequent chapters.
10 citations