Showing papers on "Narrative structure published in 1990"

The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart

Abstract: Noel Carroll, film scholar and philosopher, offers the first serious look at the aesthetics of horror. In this book he discusses the nature and narrative structures of the genre, dealing with horror as a "transmedia" phenomenon. A fan and serious student of the horror genre, Carroll brings to bear his comprehensive knowledge of obscure and forgotten works, as well as of the horror masterpieces. Working from a philosophical perspective, he tries to account for how people can find pleasure in having their wits scared out of them. What, after all, are those "paradoxes of the heart" that make us want to be horrified?

Fictional Narrative, Factual Narrative

Abstract: If words have meaning (or even multiple meanings), then "narratology"-whether in its formal aspect, as the study of narrative discourse, or its thematic aspect, as the analysis of the sequences of events and actions related by this discourse-ought by rights to concern itself with stories of all kinds, fictional and otherwise. It is evident, however, that the two branches of narratology have until now devoted their attention almost exclusively to the behavior and objects of fictional narrative alone.' And this has not been a simple empirical choice, implying no prejudice toward whatever might, for the time being, have been explicitly excluded from consideration; rather it has involved the implicit privileging of fictional narrative, which has been hypostatized as narrative par excellence, or as the model for all narratives whatsoever. The few researchers-Paul Ricoeur, Hayden White, or Paul Veyne, for instance-who have shown any interest in the figures or intrigues of historical narrative, have done so from the perspective of some other discipline: philosophy of temporality, rhetoric, episte-

Telling in Time (I): Chronology and Narrative Theory

Abstract: My main title has two bearings on narrative, one necessary, the other optional, one directed to the medium and the other to the object of narration. On the one hand, telling in time is telling in a temporal medium, where all items and structures and effects must unfold in an ordered sequence. Whether viewed from the transmitting or the receiving end, communication there proceeds along a continuum. This is evidently a sine qua non for verbal storytelling, as for all literature and discourse in language, but not for them alone. It applies no less necessarily to a variety of syncretic, multimedia forms of discoursedance, theatre, opera, cinema-whose extension in space yet combines with an irreversible progression in time. Whatever the grouping of their signs at any given moment, it cannot so much as freeze, let alone develop or regroup, except from moment to moment along the communicative process. Nor is this because they signify a narrative-which they usually do-but rather because, like narrative, their signifiers follow a line even in their least narrative moments, as when describing a place or a state of affairs. Temporality in the sense of discourse sequentiality (linearity, directionality) thus controls an assortment of media, art forms, representations. And the straining against the "tyranny of time" throughout the ages, in modernism, for example, only reaffirms and redefines the tyrant's power with each abortive rebellion. On the other hand, in a sense limited and optional to narrative (factual, fictional, epic, dramatic, operatic, cinematic) as the represen-

WHAT HOLDS A NARRATIVE TOGETHER? The Linguistic Encoding of Episode Boundaries

Abstract: This paper presents a linguistic analysis of episode boundaries in narratives produced from a 24-page picture book by German and English speakers. We investigate the development of form/function relationships involved in the discursive organization of narratives, attempting to bring together research traditions that typically consider the linguistic structuring and the conceptualization of narratives as two separate domains. Focussing in our analysis on the linguistic realization of discourse boundaries, we integrate a qualitative and quantitative approach to the exploration of (1) the relationship between the existence and commonality (“availability”) of particular markers (e.g., aspect) in a given language and the structure that narratives take, and (2) the developmental patterns in the use of several formal devices for serving discourse (i.e., narrative) functions. Episode boundaries were identified with an “importance” judgment task. These ratings were used guiding the analyses of the narrative productions of 72 subjects in three age groups (5 and 9 years, and adults) and two languages (English and German). The findings suggest that, in general, event boundaries ranking higher in the episode hierarchy are more clearly marked than events that are seen to be less important. Further, comparing the English and German narratives, the availability of devices in a language can influence the explicitness with which episode boundaries are marked. Lastly, developmental analyses suggest that children in both language groups first mark episode boundaries in the service of highlighting and intensifying locally-defined discourse level units. The use of these markers evolves toward packaging larger discourse units, resulting in a global structuring of the episodic configuration of the narrative whole. These cross-linguistic and developmental patterns suggest that marking episode boundaries involves a complex interplay between two kinds of narrative orientations: (a) the horizontal alignment of linearly-ordered narrative events, and (b) the vertical organization of events along a hierarchical axis of narrative structure.

The Effects of Expository and Narrative Prose on Student Achievement and Attitudes Toward Textbooks

Abstract: The hypothesis that narrative text structure would be more interesting than expository text structure, and would therefore motivate more learning, was tested using an experimental design. Five classes of secondary school students read a history textbook chapter written in conventional expository style, and another five classes read a narrative version in which the same subject matter was embedded in a story involving fictional characters. All students also received instruction from their teachers. Contrary to prediction, the two groups did not differ significantly on the achievement posttest. Both groups also had similarly positive attitudes toward the text version they read, although in a face-to-face comparison the majority of the students preferred the narrative version. Recommendations for further tests of the hypothesis are offered.

Beloved: a spiritual

Abstract: The literary and linguistic devices which can facilitate the revision of the historical and cultural texts of black women's experiences have perhaps their most sustained illustration in Toni Morrison's Beloved. Here, narrative structures have been consciously manipulated through a complicated interplay between the implicit orature of recovered and (re)membered events and the explicit structures of literature. The reclamation and revision of history function as both a thematic emphasis and textual methodology. The persistence of this revision is the significant strategic device of the narrative structures of the novel. Myth dominates the text. Not only has Morrison's reclamation of this story from the scores of people who interviewed Margaret Garner shortly after she killed her child in 1855 constituted an act of recovery, it has accomplished a mythic revisioning as well. Morrison refused to do any further research on Margaret Garner beyond her reviewing of the magazine article that recounted the astonishment of the preachers and journalists who found her to be "very calm . .. very serene" after murdering her child (Rothstein). The imagination that restructures the initial article Morrison read into her novel Beloved is the imagination of a myth-maker. The mythological dimensions of her story, those that recall her earlier texts, that rediscover the altered universe of the black diaspora, that challenge the Western valuations of time and event (place and space) are those that, in various quantities in other black women writers and in sustained quantities in Morrison's works, allow a critical theory of text to emerge.1 Morrison revisions a history both spoken and written, felt and submerged. It is in the coalescence of the known and unknown elements of slavery-the events, miniscule in significance to the captors but major disruptions of black folks' experience in nurturing and loving and being-where Morrison's reconstruction of the historical text of slavery occurs. Morrison's reformulation propels a backlog of memories headlong into a postemancipation community that has been nearly spiritually incapacitated by the trauma of slavery. For Morrison's novel, what complicates the physical and psychic anguish is the reality that slavery itself defies traditional historiography. The victim's own chronicles of these events were systematically submerged, ignored, mistrusted, or superceded by "historians" of the era. This novel positions the consequences of

Narrative Perspective in Fiction: A Phenomenological Meditation of Reader, Text, and World

Abstract: Daniel Chamberlain examines the nature of narrative perspective in a manner that does not presuppose a passive definition of perception. Rather, he considers perspective as a medium through which the potential meanings of texts are disclosed and through which to share the vital experience of narrative from today's familiar and culturally distant worlds.The book is divided into two parts. The first part address narrative perspective within a theoretical framework. Chamberlain uses this in order to consider narrative perspective as an integral part of the more general process of perception that mediates language and the experience of texts. Perception is here understood as an active recreation of the world at every moment; as an opening through which one's self-awareness and awareness of the world are correlated. By considering narrative perspective in terms of perception, equal importance is given to its temporal and spatial aspects. The dialectic of time and space inevitably comes to bear on narrative perspective through the techniques, strategies, and medium of a text's transmission. Part one concludes with an examination of contemporary definitions of narrative perspective and with the presentation of an alternative approach to its study.The second part offers a reading of two texts, each of which clearly presents the major issues facing this inquiry. The narrative perspective of each is considered as occupying a degree of similarity and difference within the dialectic of time and space. Each perspective is, in turn, correlated to the prevalent medium of discourse within its cultural milieu.

Centering on God: Method and Message in Luke-Acts

Abstract: This comprehensive consideration of Luke-Acts offers lucid introductions to a wide variety of exegetical methods. Emphasizing the use of literary criticism, and relating the methods of Roland Barthes's five literary voices, the author analyzes point of view, levels of reliability, and strategies for reformulating reader response, narrative structure, characterization, textual gaps, the cultural repertoire, and redundant antitheses. This book advocates synthesis as the ultimate aim of reading and interpreting and opens new avenues for understanding this important unit of New Testament literature.

Stories of Desire in the Monk

Abstract: "Authorship is a mania, to conquer which no reasons are sufficiently strong; and you might as easily persuade me not to love, as I persuade you not to write."' In this comment to his page Theodore, a budding author as well as man-friday, Raymond, the protagonist of Matthew G. Lewis's gothic thriller The Monk, draws an analogy between narrative and desire that would be taken up enthusiastically by critics and theorists nearly two centuries later. Indeed, we now believe that narrative motivates desire, is represented within it, is the precondition for storytelling and is even a form of desire itself: in short, the imbrication of desire and narrative has assumed an almost ontological status in current theory.2 Yet despite The Monk's foregrounding of this imbrication, which is evident in specific instances such as Raymond's comment as well as in the intricate narrative structure of the novel as a whole, most critics have tended to consider its narrative qualities only briefly and to discuss The Monk primarily as a social document, an index of its historical moment.3 While my own reading also ends by considering the historical significance of The Monk, I hope to show that its narrative qualities are inextricable from its political content. I begin by discussing The Monk's repeated insistence on the alignment of narrative and desire, then show how this alignment forms the basis of its own narrative structure, and finally, suggest that theme and structure are constitutive of its social/political argument: a defense of the concept of individual desire and of the right to articulate that desire in both speech and action.4

On Narrative Studies and Narrative Genres

Abstract: In the past two or three decades, students of narrative have very much consolidated and developed our knowledge by isolating, (re)characterizing, and (re)classifying a large number of features distinctive of or pertinent to (verbal) narrative (see Adam 1985; Genette 1980, 1988; Mitchell 1981; Prince 1987; Scholes and Kellogg 1966). In the area of narrative discourse (that of the narrating rather than the narrated, the representing and not the represented), for instance, Genette and others (e.g., Bal 1985; Chatman 1978; Rimmon-Kenan 1983; Todorov 1981) have described the temporal orders that a narrative text can follow, the anachronies (flashbacks and flash-forwards) that it can exhibit, the achronic (undatable) structures that it can accommodate. Furthermore, they have characterized narrative speed and its canonical tempos (ellipsis, summary, scene, stretch, and pause). They have investigated narrative frequency (the relationship between the number of times an event happens and the number of times it is recounted), examined narrative distance (the extent of narratorial mediation) and narrative point of view (the perceptual or conceptual position according to which the narrated events are depicted), studied the types of discourse that a text can adopt to report the utterances and thoughts of characters, and analyzed the major kinds of narration (posterior, anterior, simultaneous, intercalated) as well as their modes of combination (two different acts of narration can be linked through a simple

The cyclical way of the priestess: on the significance of narrative structures in marion zimmer bradley’s. the mists of avalon

Abstract: The Arthurian legend has inspired a new vogue of late twentieth Century fiction, the general development of which (including the recent re-tellings on the populär market) has been analysed in numerous publications. Little attention has been paid, however, to the Interpretation of individual modern versions. A particularly interesting example of this genre is M. Zimmer Bradley's The Mists ofAvalon; a book which was on the list of bestselling novels published by the Spiegel, the Welt am Sonntag and the Stern for almost two years from 1984-1985. The author has been accused of concocting the typical fantasy-sexcrime-feminism mixture which responds to current market trends. However, I believe that the answer to the success of this book is more complex. I want to show in the first part of this essay what the specific

Children's Narrative Structure: How Do Japanese Children Talk About Their Own Stories?.

Abstract: The conversational narratives of 17 Japanese children aged 5 to 9 were analyzed using stanza analysis. Three distinctive features emerged: (1) the narratives are exceptionally succinct; (2) they are usually free-standing collections of three expariences; and (3) stanzas almost always consist of three lines. These features reflect the basic characteristics of "haiku," a commonly-practiced literary form that often combines poetry and narrative, and an ancient game called "karuta," which also displays three lines of written discourse. These literacy games explain both the extraordinary regularity of lines per stanza and the smooth acquisition of reading by a culture that practices restricted, ambiguous, oral-style discourse. The narratives can be understood in the larger context of flomoiyari" (empathy) training of Japanese children. This empathy training may explain the production, comprehension, and appreciation of ambiguous discourse in Japanese society. An 84-item bibliography is included, and narrative samples and discourse analysis results are appended. (Author/MSE) *********************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * *********************************************************************** Children's Narrative Structure: How Do Japanese Children Talk about Their Own Stories? "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL IN OTHER THAN PAPER COPY HAS BEEN GRANTED BY

Form, Individuality and the Novel: An Analysis of Narrative Structure in Early German Prose

Abstract: Preliminary investigations the disintegration of the mythic analogon in the novels of Wickram the mythic analogon in "Galmy" the breakdown of the mythic analogon in "Galmy" the mythic analogon in "Gabriotto" and "Godfaden" the disintegration of the mythic analogon in "Gabriotto" and "the Golden Thread" the style of Wickram's cautionary novels symptoms of disintigration in the style of the cautionary novel the mythic analogon in non-literary prose of the 16th century.

The Visual Elegance of Ts'its'tsi'nako and the Other Invisible Characters in "Ceremony.".

Abstract: In his article "The Reader's Lessons in Ceremony, James Ruppert makes the observation about Leslie Silko's novel, "[Ceremony] is not only a novel that presents a philosophical and cultural viewpoint, but a novel that teaches us how to read it and how to understand its special narrative structures" (78). Later in the same article, while discussing the presence of formal constructions and their relationship to the absence of chapter breaks, he continues: This lack of expected breaking of the flow of the prose...discourages the reader from imposing a strict chronological order on the narrative, thus reinforcing the perception that the novel is a simultaneous, unified moment that circles out like the waves around a rock dropped in a quiet pond, rather than a linear progression of moments. (80) The understanding that Ceremony is circular rather than linear is easy to embrace given the evidence Ruppert presents in his article. However, Ruppert's circular-ring argument against a linear reading of ceremony still implies two-dimensionality; I would argue that the many stories and story-poems told by Silko's narrator and by the characters in the novel imply many more dimensions--of which only two (lack of organized chapter breaks and the "unified moment") are explained by Ruppert. In fact, if one were to characterize the novel with visual imagery, the better image might be a collection of fragments from a number of seemingly unrelated objects. Using a more literary metaphor, one might describe the story as nearly coherent shards of stories mixed with fragments of color and light, fractured images, disjointed personalities, dismembered voices, and elements of incompatible realities segmented, then recombined in new juxtapositions; even so, this description only addresses the things in the story that are visible. It is arguable that there is even more happening in Ceremony beyond the visible; invisible characters seem to move through the text, carrying with them totems of goodwill and evil. These invisible characters and their roles in Ceremony are the ultimate purpose of this paper. Silko prefaces her novel with a brief story-poem told in stanzas. It is the story of Ts'its'tsi'nako, Thought Woman, the spider, namer and creator of all things in the universe. It ends with two stanzas that say Spider is thinking a story and the narrator is telling the story she is thinking. By implication, the narrator is saying that by telling the story she is creating a reality, an actual ceremony. The stanzas are an excellent, somewhat selfconscious, introduction into the novel, but they contain an interesting aberration. Silko's third stanza in the Thought-Woman story appears as:

The effects of internalising a narrative text structure on the comprehension and recall of narrative texts

Abstract: This study was an analysis �f an aspect of oral language comprehension. The major purpose was to evaluate the impact of the facilitating effect of a knowledge of a narrative text framework, upon listeners' comprehension of narratives. One research question was addressed: In the immediate recall of a simple, unfamiliar narrative text, presented orally, once only, will year six listeners who have been taught the schematic structure of narratives perform significantly better than similar year six students who have not? A teacher-devised listening text was modified from an S.R.A. (1975) listening kit. The results of that test were used as a classifying variable to place students into groups on the basis of being "skilful" or "less-skilful" listeners. To investigate the research question, a simple pre-test-treatment­ post-test design was used, consisting of two experimental groups and two control groups. The testing procedure for the pre-text and post-test was identical. It consisted of Ss in both the experimental and control groups listening to a taped story, followed by each subject's immediate, free recall of the story. The data made available through the recounts, were analysed according to two quantifiable dimensions;

The fantastic in the parabolic language of Jesus

Abstract: This essay presents analysis of selected parables and other short enigmatic sayings attributed to Jesus and recorded in the canonical Gospels and the Gospel of Thomas, in the light of contemporary theories of the literary fantastic developed by T. Todorov and E. Rabkin. These theories descriptionbe the fantastic as a narrative structure within which the implied reader hesitates between the genres of the marvelous and the uncanny. This fundamental indeterminacy of reference reverses or subverts the ground rules of narrative realism. The fantastic structure plays an important role both in the parabolic sayings and in the interpretations of those sayings by biblical scholars. This is most clear at he levels of the sayings tradition represented by the Gospels of Mark and Thomas. In contrast, the Q material displays very little of the fantastic. Matthew and Luke also tend to determine the reference of sayings material, either to the marvelous or the uncanny; this eliminates the element of the fantastic in favour of theological coherence. The larger narrative becomes increasingly certain of who Jesus is. John reverses this tendency and 're-fantasises' the sayings material, but John also moves the fantastic hesitation to a different stratum of the narrative, thereby disarming this aspect of the narrative. The paper concludes with a few general observations on the relation between the fantastic and the credibility of narrative, and the consequences of this relation for understanding these texts.

Sexual/textual marginalities of Caribbean inspiration and origin a thesis on two texts by two women writers of Caribbean origin upon the theme of marginality

Abstract: This thesis is an exploration of the theme of Marginality in Writing by women of Caribbean origin. My work condensed itself into a specific analysis of two texts. Taken together, these texts focus the insights I researched into a significant whole. Each text was written by a woman of Caribbean origin, and their backgrounds are a symbolic polarity from each other. Jean Rhys was a white Creole born in Dominica in 1894 and who spent her adult life in England; Jamaica Kincaid is black, native to Antigua and now a journalist in New York. The protagonists of each text - Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid, and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys - are both young girls influenced by the image of their mothers. Significantly, they share almost the same name (Annie/Antoinette) which is also that of their mothers. Thus they become a symbolic fusion of a heroine of Caribbean origin. In the course of extensive and eclectic reading, I discovered the theme of Marginality to be entwined with the concept of Intertextuality. In separate chapters, I have discussed marginality with reference to narrative structure and narrative time, image and metaphor, culture (which involves colonialism in the Caribbean), race relations and gender (specifically feminist), and ultimately according to Susan Sontag's observation of the marginal literary subject: an unimportant 'work' ... could be a marvellous 'text’. Considering something as a 'text' means...precisely to suspend conventional evaluations. ... notions of 'text’ and 'textuality' charges the critic with the task of discarding worn-out meanings for fresh ones. I hope that in the course of my thesis, I have succeeded in the enlightenment of fresh meanings in Writing by women of Caribbean origin. I conclude that an understanding of the significance of these texts lies in the fact that their marginal quality is part of a total intertextuality.

Tropes of history: Epic, farce and romance in Marx's philosophy of history

Abstract: Summary What is the relationship between the philosophy of history and literature, and how does this influence our understanding of actual historical events? Are narrative structures imposed post facto on historical events in the stories we relate, or are narrative structures part of the very structure of our experience of history? Adopting the hypothesis that historical events only become intelligible when placed within narrative structures, the article sets out to demonstrate the importance of such narrative structures as epic, farce and romance in Marx's philosophy of history. The central claim of the article is that Marx's philosophy of history presupposes a tripartite narrative structure in terms of which historical events in the modern age are represented in three different stages: initially in terms of farce, that is as the inglorious power struggles of the bourgeoisie; then in terms of epic, a heroic struggle in which the proletariat gradually asserts itself; and finally in terms of romance, where...