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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: In this article, the authors show how these strategies can produce surprisingly complex narrative dynamics, and here they use the term "dynamics" in the sense proposed by the authors.
Abstract: Although the genre of reality television is mocked by critics and rarely discussed by narrative theorists, reality shows confront diffi cult storytelling problems that the best shows resolve in highly creative ways. As nonfi ction, the reality show shares some of the norms associated with the documentary fi lm, with the producers and editors assembling a story from an unwieldy mass of largely unscripted recorded footage. As a genre of television, however, the reality show, like the fi ctional episodic serial, must confront the challenge of maintaining viewer engagement through the commercial breaks and over the course of a long, multiepisode season. Together, these two sets of constraints serve to establish the reality genre as a distinctive mode of storytelling, one reducible neither to the fi lm documentary nor to the fi ctional episodic serial, yet drawing storytelling strategies from both. Th is essay will show how these strategies can produce surprisingly complex narrative dynamics, and here I use the term “dynamics” in the sense proposed
8 citations
Cites background from "Story and Discourse: Narrative Stru..."
...As with any narrative, we can draw a distinction between two related sequences: the sequence of events as they are presented to the spectator and the sequence of events as they are reconstructed by the spectator (Chatman 1978; Sternberg 2010: 636)....
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TL;DR: This paper examined how the materiality of digital media contributes to a layered metaphor that delivers meaning, reflecting on the meaning of words and their meaning in the context of digital writing, using a practice-based research project in digital writing.
Abstract: Based on a larger practice-based research project in digital writing, this article examines how the materiality of digital media contributes to a layered metaphor that delivers meaning, reflects on...
8 citations
Cites background from "Story and Discourse: Narrative Stru..."
...‘Fabula’ and ‘syuzhet’ are also referred to as ‘story’ and ‘discourse’ (Chatman, 1978), terms denoting the sequence of narrative events and the way the events are communicated, respectively....
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...…share a set of structures that define them: spatial elements such as setting and objects, temporal elements indicating a sequence of related and often causal events, intelligent agents who take actions based on these events and a sense of closure or denouement (Chatman, 1978; Ryan, 2004, 2006)....
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01 Jan 1990-Ilha do Desterro: A Journal of English Language, Literatures in English and Cultural Studies
TL;DR: The authors discuss the techniques used by Virginia Woolf in her last novel, Between the Acts, and make a few general comments about the basic modes of narration, including scene, summary, and descripition.
Abstract: In order to discuss the techniques used by Virginia Woolf in her last novel, Between the Acts, 1 it is necessary to make a few general comments about the basic modes of narration. These widely recognized modes are described by William Peden as scene, in which the author depicts the action in the process of its taking place; summary, in which the author compresses action necessary to include but not of specific importance or interest to require more direct scenic method; and descripition, in which the author halts action to describe what the narrator or the characters see.
8 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: A review of the major theoretical statements on this connection and the empirical evidence which has been put forward to support the notion of literature's having an important role in learning to read can be found in this article.
Abstract: In very recent years there has been a great development of interest in the contribution of literature to reading development. In this paper I would like to review the major theoretical statements on this connection and the empirical evidence which has been put forward to support the notion of literature's having an important role in learning to read. In The Cool Web , Aidan Warlow (1976) argued that "Children will overcome all sorts of linguistic obstacles ... if the alternative world of the story is one that is desirable and comprehensive" (p. 102). Warlow, then, saw the importance of literature to literacy in what Genette (1980) or Chatman (1978) would call "Story." The interest of "what happens next" contained in the imaginary world of literature provides the drive to read and hence encourages literacy both its acquisition and development. On the other hand, Gordon Wells (1982) has since argued that "hearing stories aloud familiarises [children] with the language of books and with the characteristic narrative structures that they will meet in story books at school" (p. 11). Thus Wells is describing the learning of "literary literacy," as it were, the acquisition of the structures of literature itself as a branch of reading. He effectively suggests that this is gained to an important extent through the learning of what Chatman (1978) would call "discourse" or Genette (1980) "narrative." These are two distinct, but interwoven strands in the research of the connection between literature and literacy the notions of learning to read through literature and learning to read literature. They are interwoven because increasingly researchers have been unable to study how and why children learn to read through literature without at the same time addressing the question of how they acquire a competence in dealing with literary structures.
8 citations
TL;DR: This paper investigated how the prominence of places in discourse is influenced by their role in the described situations and their order of mention in the text, and found that when places are central to discourse, their prominence is determined by their roles in described situations; otherwise, it was determined by order of mentions.
8 citations