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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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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Very few critics have ever admired the structure of Euripides' Andromache, and this is largely blamed on the structure as mentioned in this paper, not that it came second in the trilogy or in the competition.
Abstract: Very few critics have ever admired the structure of Euripides' Andromache. The enigmatic comment of Aristophanes' hypothesis, τo δe δρᄊµα τωv δevτeρωv has almost invariably been taken as meaning that the play is second rate, not that it came second in the trilogy or in the competition, and this is largely blamed on the structure. Most critics admire the first portion of the play dominated by Andromache, some are willing to tolerate the middle section concerned with Hermione, and many find the last portion, the sorrows of Peleus, effective, but almost no-one likes the combination of the three. It takes a rugged individualist like A. W. Verrall to say: ‘[The story is] in dexterous combination and moral interest one of the best among the extant remains of Attic tragedy.’

10 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a socio-rhetorical approach to the reading of the Gospels has been proposed, based on a specific understanding of what is meant by a narratological reading of a text and, on the other hand, by a social-scientific interpretation of biblical texts.
Abstract: In the past two decades, narrative criticism (narratology) and social-scientific criticism have come to the fore as the two most prominent new methodologies to be associated with gospel research. When these two methodologies are integrated in the reading of biblical texts, this is now referred to as "socio-rhetorical inter­ pretation". This article departs from a specific understanding of what is meant by a narratological reading of a text on the one hand and, on the other hand, by a social-scientific interpretation of biblical texts, in order to propose a working definition of a socio-rhetorical analysis of texts. 1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS As the 20 th century ends and the third millennium begin, narrative criticism and social scientific criticism have come to the fore as the two most prominent new methodologies to be associated with current gospel research. Moreover, literary approaches to the Gospels (e g, narrative criticism) have now established themselves sufficiently for scholars studying the Gospels from a literary perspective not to need to fear losing what has been gained in the last two decades if they endeavour to integrate their work with social scientific criticism. According to Tannehill (1997:132), the need for this integra

10 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: The focus in this article is on the technical end of entanglement and the points of contact between technical and semiotic elements of play.
Abstract: I begin with an assertion that I consider an axiom of videogame studies. Gameplay is the expression of combinations of definite semiotic elements in specific relations to equally definite technical elements. The semiotic plane of a game's expression draws on the full range of common cultural material available to game designers and players: shared myth, conventions of genre and narrative form, comprehension of the relevant intertextual canons, etc. The technical plane of the expression-computational, electronic and mechanical systems that support game play-is the more restricted. Its elements are localized to a given situation of play (this software, this hardware) in ways that the semiotic elements of play seem not to be (Where do relevant cultural myth and the intertextual canon start and stop? Will this not vary according to the competence of the player?). Moreover, because the technical elements of play should demonstrate the consistency and stability fundamental to usable computing devices, they are deterministic and capable of only finitely many configurations. (For the present and the foreseeable future, we play in Turing's world.) The challenge of game design is to program the entanglement of semiotic and technical elements in an interesting and rewarding way. The expression of play activates this entanglement in well-defined and predictable combinations. The cultural-semiotic repertoire of videogame play can be measured, though the extent to which this could be limited to the videogame, strictly speaking, is doubtful. Games are rich cultural texts, drawing on symbolic domains well outside of a conjectured gameworld or a collection of user responses; an anthropology of gaming must reach beyond the material contexts of a specific episode of play. My focus in this article is on the technical end of entanglement and the points of contact between technical and semiotic elements of play. Though intuitively the player must imagine that some contact is necessary-the game's interface must engage the underlying game engine, which must engage the computer's operating system, and so on-the relation between a given technical element or elements and traits of the gameworld will not always be expressed in ways that are significant for the player, whose attention is, for the most part, on events and existents of the gameworld. Some technical elements may seem to have no effect on the game's expression; their influences, if any, can only be conjectured. (For instance, how is playing a text-based adventure game created for circa-1980 computers different from playing the …

10 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate the linguistic representation of the British Prime Minister, Theresa May's, internal monologue in a satirical newspaper article, and they argue that this cross-fictional, stylistic approach better accounts for the satire effects of fictionality in the text than those which place a premium on authorial intentions and the invented nature of the narrative discourse.
Abstract: In this article, we approach fictionality as a set of semiotic strategies prototypically associated with fictional forms of storytelling (Hatavara and Mildorf, 2017a, 2017b). Whilst these strategies are strongly associated with fiction, they might also be used in non-fictional contexts – or those in which the ontological status of the narrative is ambivalent – to create ‘cross-fictional’ rhetorical effects (Hatavara and Mildorf, 2017b). We focus on one such strategy – the representation of thought and consciousness. Using the concept of ‘mind style’ (Fowler, 1977 and 1996 [1986]; Leech and Short, 1980; Semino, 2007), we investigate the linguistic representation of the British Prime Minister, Theresa May’s, internal monologue in a satirical newspaper article. Throughout the article, the author uses cross-fictionality strategies to represent what May ‘really thinks’ as she delivers a speech to the Conservative Party conference. The stylistic analysis of the Prime Minister’s mind style facilitates an account of the elaborate and nuanced mixing of May and the author’s ideological perspectives throughout the piece. We argue that this cross-fictional, stylistic approach better accounts for the satirical effects of fictionality in the text than those which place a premium on authorial intention and the invented nature of the narrative discourse (for example, Nielsen, Phelan and Walsh, 2015).

10 citations


Cites background from "Story and Discourse: Narrative Stru..."

  • ...103) ‘to refer to any distinctive linguistic presentation of an individual mental self’ and, later, ‘the world view of an author, or a narrator, or a character constituted by the ideational structure of the text’ (Fowler, 1996, p. 214; we return to the problems with this second definition shortly). As Leech and Short (1981, p. 153) suggest, ‘mind style’ is a particularly appropriate term where the linguistic choices made throughout a text consistently reflect a particular worldview or set of cognitive habits. Fowler (1977, 1996) gives Halliday’s (1971) influential stylistic analysis of Golding’s The Inheritors as an example of such consistent linguistic choices....

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Dissertation
01 Dec 2013
TL;DR: This research consolidates the notion that for the comprehension of such complex dynamics a more comprehensive theory of narrative is required.
Abstract: The advancement of theoretical screenwriting has been limited to popularized “how-to” techniques to further investigate the field These techniques were based on internalised rules-of-thumb drawn from inductive observations of existing screenplays Such analyses failed to provide answers to two troubling fundamental questions: first, what makes stories emerge in the context of narrative, and second, what are the underlying dynamics that allow a screenplay to function as a unified whole? The contribution of Screenplectics lies in first, by explaining how a screenplay functions synergistically, and appropriating the necessary metaphors, systemically And second, by explaining the mechanism that is employed between compositional interactions in various structural levels that allows the coherent accumulative derivative we call story to emerge The transition from an empirical to a theoretical perspective is achieved by examining such dynamics under the prism of holism and through the introduction of characteristics of complex systems: a network of components arranged hierarchically that interact parallel to one another in non-linear ways This hierarchy shapes the foundation of the different layers of structure in a screenplay: deep, intermediate and surface structure This research consolidates the notion that for the comprehension of such complex dynamics a more comprehensive theory of narrative is required

10 citations