The Experientiality of Narrative: An Enactivist Approach

Abstract: This study deals with the influence of film form in fiction in terms of narrative discourse, focusing on issues of genre, narration, temporality, and the imitation of cinematic techniques. It provides a theoretical analysis of different methodologies (intermediality theory, semiotics, narratology, genre theory) which are useful to assess how a cinematic dimension has found a place in literary writing. This research, in particular, puts forth the idea of a 'para-cinematic narrator', a 'flattening of the narrative relief', and a 'para-cinematic narrative contract' as constitutive items of strongly cinematised fiction. These three theoretical items are subsumed in the concept of 'cinematic mode in fiction', which describes a distillation of characteristics of the film form on the written page. This research therefore represents a theoretical attempt to demonstrate how the cinematic component integrates the stylistic and generic traits of novels and short stories relating to different periods, styles and genres of the twentieth century. The proposed theoretical model is tested on a corpus of American, French, and, especially, Italian case studies. The remediation of film that emerges from these texts points to a complex interconnection between cinema and literature which still requires full acknowledgment in literary history.

Abstract: In the analysis and interpretation of fictional minds, unnatural and cognitive narratology may seem mutually exclusive. They each highlight different aspects of what narrators and characters think and feel, and their explanatory grounds differ. An unnatural reading unearths the narrative features, such as literal mind reading, that cannot be reduced to real-world possibilities, whereas a cognitive approach may focus on what is analogous to real-world cognition, or it may explain how unusual fiction is made sense of in cognitive terms. This article offers a synthesis in which the contrast between the two is closely examined. Then the article makes a case for a dialectical approach in which readings move from one position to another in order to achieve a more rewarding and encompassing understanding of fictional minds in general and unnatural minds in particular. The argument is developed through a reading of Peter Verhelst’s The Man I Became and through a discussion of the case of mind reading.

Abstract: This chapter takes as its point of departure the influential French sociologist Émile Durkheim’s view that religion and ritual are inherently social phenomena (Durkheim, 1912/1965). Although we emphasize the social aspects of religion and ritual in this chapter, this is not to deny the value of approaches that focus on the individual as the unit of analysis. We focus on the role that collective rituals and religious beliefs play in fostering and maintaining cooperation and coordination. This seems to put us once again on Durkheim’s side, insofar as his theory of religion and ritual is functionalist and thus presents them as playing a role in maintaining social order in society. However, we do not seek to defend a functionalist explanation of religion and ritual here. Rather, we aim to consider the effects of these cultural technologies. Our focus is empirical, however, rather than just theoretical. We examine the effects that collective rituals can have on cooperation and coordination by reviewing recent work from experimental and developmental psychology, as well as the fields of cognitive anthropology and cultural evolution. By “ritual,” we mean a culturally sanctioned, collectively performed set of actions that are characterized by such traits as normative rigidity, repetitive redundancy, and functional or causal opacity (Boyer & Liénard, 2006; Liénard & Boyer, 2006; Rappaport, 1999; Rossano, 2012; Whitehouse, 2011). By “religion,” we mean the social and psychological phenomena associated with culturally shared beliefs in supernatural agents or forces (Boyer, 2001; Guthrie, 1993; Jong, 2015; Pyysiäinen, 2003, 2009; Sutherland, 2012)

Abstract: Readers often describe vivid experiences of voices and characters in a manner that has been likened to hallucination. Little is known, however, of how common such experiences are, nor the individual differences they may reflect. Here we present the results of a 2014 survey conducted in collaboration with a national UK newspaper and an international book festival. Participants ( n = 1566) completed measures of reading imagery, inner speech, and hallucination-proneness, including 413 participants who provided detailed free-text descriptions of their reading experiences. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that reading imagery was related to phenomenological characteristics of inner speech and proneness to hallucination-like experiences. However, qualitative analysis of reader’s accounts suggested that vivid reading experiences were marked not just by auditory phenomenology, but also their tendency to cross over into non-reading contexts. This supports social-cognitive accounts of reading while highlighting a role for involuntary and uncontrolled personality models in the experience of fictional characters.