Showing papers on "Narratology published in 2004"

Narrative across media : the languages of storytelling

Abstract: Narratology has been conceived from its earliest days as a project that transcends disciplines and media. The essays gathered here address the question of how narrative migrates, mutates, and creates meaning as it is expressed across various media. Dividing the inquiry into five areas: face-to-face narrative, still pictures, moving pictures, music, and digital media, Narrative across Media investigates how the intrinsic properties of the supporting medium shape the form of narrative and affect the narrative experience. Unlike other interdisciplinary approaches to narrative studies, all of which have tended to concentrate on narrative across language-supported fields, this unique collection provides a much-needed analysis of how narrative operates when expressed through visual, gestural, electronic, and musical means. In doing so, the collection redefines the act of storytelling. Although the fields of media and narrative studies have been invigorated by a variety of theoretical approaches, this volume seeks to avoid a dominant theoretical bias by providing instead a collection of concrete studies that inspire a direct look at texts rather than relying on a particular theory of interpretation. A contribution to both narrative and media studies, Narrative across Media is the first attempt to bridge the two disciplines.

Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students

Abstract: A - Introduction: key concepts in stylistics 1 What is stylistics? 2 Stylistics and levels of language 3 Grammar and style 4 Rhythm and metre 5 Narrative stylistics 6 Style as choice 7 Style and point of view 8 Representing speech and thought 9 Dialogue and discourse 10 Cognitive stylistics 11 Metaphor and metonymy 12 New directions in stylistics: corpus approaches B - Development: doing stylistics 1 Developments in stylistics. 2 Levels of language at work: an example from poetry 3 Sentence styles: development and illustration 4 Interpreting patterns of sound 5 Developments in structural narratology 6 Style and transitivity 7 Approaches to point of view 8 Techniques of speech and thought presentation 9 Dialogue in drama 10 Developments in cognitive stylistics 11 Styles of metaphor 12 Developments in corpus stylistics C - Exploration: investigating style 1 Is there a "literary language"? 2 Style, register and dialect 3 Grammar and genre: a short study in Imagism 4 Styles in a single poem: an exploration 5 A sociolinguistic model of narrative 6 Transitivity, characterisation and literary genre 7 Exploring point of view in narrative fiction 8 A workshop on speech and thought presentation 9 Exploring dialogue 10 Cognitive stylistics at work 11 Exploring metaphors in different kinds of texts 12 Using corpora in stylistic analysis D- Extension: readings in stylistics. 1 Stylistics and the teaching of literature (Henry Widdowson) 2 Style and verbal play (Katie Wales) 3 Teaching grammar and style (Ronald Carter) 4 Sound, style and onomatopoeia (Derek Attridge) 5 A typology of narrative gaps (Donald Hardy) 6 Transitivity at work (Deirdre Burton) 7 Style variation and point of view (Mick Short) 8 The effects of free indirect discourse (Joe Bray) 9 Multi-modal analysis and the stylistics of drama (Dan McIntyre) 10 Conceptual blending and stylistic analysis (Barbara Dancygier) 11 Cognitive stylistics and the theory of metaphor (Peter Stockwell) 12 Corpus stylistics (Michaela Mahlberg and Catherine Smith)

Narrative theory and emergent interactive narrative

Abstract: This paper aims at reviewing narrative approaches and theories in an effort to assess their potential as suitable models for computational implementation within the EU Framework V-funded project VICTEC (Virtual ICT with Empathic Characters). We discuss classical narrative theories as well as envisage alternative interactive models according to the narrative requirements presented by VICTEC. The Emergent Narrative (Aylett, 1999) concept is also defined and referred as an essential element of the VICTEC research project.

A model of narrative circulation

Abstract: This article suggests that narrative meaning structures have different modes of existence: the “told”, the “inner” and the “lived” modes. Their definitions and mutual relationships are presented in the form of a schematic model. The inner narrative represents the experiental mode of narrative form. It is an individual's interpretation of his/her life, in which the past events, present situation and future projects are understood using cultural narrative models as resources. It is (partly) made external by told narratives, and validated/revised in that process. The lived narrative, again, refers to the real-life drama, which is shaped in the interplay between situational constraints and the inner narrative that guides one's actions in changing life situations. The article reviews narrative research focusing on the studies and discussions related to the relations between the different modes of narrativity. (Narrative Theory, Narrative Methodology, Inner Narrative, Lived Narrative)

Narrative as Social Practice: Anglo-Western and Australian Aboriginal Oral Traditions

Abstract: Narrative as Social Practice sets out to explore the complex and fascinating interrelatedness of narrative and culture. It does so by contrasting the oral storytelling traditions of two widely divergent cultures- Anglo-Western culture and the Central Australian culture of the Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara Aborigines. Combining discourse-analytical and pragmalinguistic methodologies with the perspectives of ethnopoetics and the ethnography of communication, this book presents a highly original and engaging study of storytelling as a vital communicative activity at the heart of socio-cultural life. The book is concerned with both theoretical and empirical issues. It engages critically with the theoretical framework of social constructivism and the notion of social practice, and it offers critical discussions of the most influential theories of narrative put forward in Western thinking. Arguing for the adoption of a communication-oriented and cross-cultural perspective as a prerequisite for improving our understanding of the cultural variability of narrative practice, Klapproth presents detailed textual analyses of Anglo-Western and Australian Aboriginal oral narratives, and contextualizes them with respect to the different storytelling practices, values and worldviews in both cultures. Narrative as Social Practice offers new insights to students and specialists in the fields of narratology, discourse analysis, cross-cultural pragmatics, anthropology, folklore study, the ethnography of communication, and Australian Aboriginal studies.

The Narrative Voice in the Theogony of Hesiod

Abstract: This volume offers analysis of the narratological structure of the Theogony with the purpose of elucidating a major, unifying theme in this poem: the relationship between the divine and mortal realms. The techniques of narratology are herein employed to support the argument that Hesiod portrays the cosmos as sharply divided between gods and men. The Theogony should therefore be read as a didactic poem explaining primarily the position of man vis-a-vis the gods. The first half of this book discusses relevant scholarship and introduces the theme of relationship of gods to men in the Theogony. The second half of the book discusses how Hesiod employs Character-Text, Attributive Discourse, Embedded Focalization, Anachrony, and Commentary to achieve his didactic purposes.

Where to from here? A narrative approach to career counseling

Abstract: This article addresses the issues of career counseling and career‐based satisfaction. It is argued that taking a narrative approach to career counseling is both theoretically and practically justified. The article explores narrative theory in relation to career counseling and identity, and illustrates the central notions that arise from the theory, with a brief case study. It is concluded that a narrative approach to career counseling can assist clients who are uncertain about where to go next in their careers, particularly within the context of the boundaryless career.

Doing Game Studies: A Multi-method Approach to the Study of Textuality, Interactivity and Narrative Space

Abstract: The emergence of game studies is provoking a struggle between adapted older disciplines in the effort to forge a new, discrete field of study. This paper reports on a two-year project titled Textuality in Video Games and the range of research techniques that were employed in order to begin answering questions about role-play, pleasure, agency and narrative. The paper outlines how narratology and film theory, social psychology and social semiotics were deployed separately and in various combinations to analyse computer role-play games, the interaction between player and text, and the cultural work of player and fan communities.

Epic Grief: Personal Laments in Homer's Iliad

Abstract: This study of the gooi or personal laments in Homer's Iliad once and for all articulates the poetic techniques regulating this type of speech. Going beyond the tendency to view lament as a repetitive and group-based activity, this work shows instead the primacy of the goos, a sub-genre which the Iliad has "produced" by absorbing the funerary genre of lament. Oral theory, narratology, semiotics, rhetorical analysis are deftly applied to explore the ways personal laments develop principal epic themes and unravel narrative threads weaving the thematical texture of the entire Iliad (and beyond): the wrath of Achilles, the deaths of Patroclus and Hector, the grief of Achilles and his future death, the foreshadowing of Troy's destruction. Winner of the Annual Award in Classics (2007) of the Academy of Athens.

Point of View in Translation: A Corpus-based Study of French Translations of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse

Abstract: Narratology does not distinguish between original and translated fiction. Indeed, narratological models, such as the one proposed by Chatman (1990:74) do not pay any attention to the translator. Since the 1990's, the visibility of translators in translated narrative texts has been increasingly discussed and researchers like Schiavi (1996) and Hermans (1996) introduced the concept of the translator's voice, which attempts to recognise the 'other' voice in translation, i.e., the presence of the translator. Corpus-based translation studies have also focused on recurrent features of translated language (see, for example, Baker 1993, Kenny 2001; Laviosa 1997; Olohan & Baker 2000), and corpus techniques and tools are being employed to identify the translators' 'style' in their translations (Baker 2000). Bosseaux (2004) seeks to define the nature of the translator's discursive presence by exploring certain narratological aspects of the relation between originals and translations. This investigation is particular...

Shakespeare, from Stage to Screen

Abstract: How is a Shakespearean play transformed when it is directed for the screen? In this 2004 book, Sarah Hatchuel uses literary criticism, narratology, performance history, psychoanalysis and semiotics to analyse how the plays are fundamentally altered in their screen versions. She identifies distinct strategies chosen by film directors to appropriate the plays. Instead of providing just play-by-play or film-by-film analyses, the book addresses the main issues of theatre/film aesthetics, making such theories and concepts accessible before applying them to practical cases. Her book also offers guidelines for the study of sequences in Shakespearean adaptations and includes examples from all the major films from the 1899 King John, through the adaptations by Olivier, Welles and Branagh, to Taymor's 2000 Titus and beyond. This book is aimed at scholars, teachers and students of Shakespeare and film studies, providing a clear and logical apparatus with which to examine Shakespearean screen adaptations.

The dynamics of narrative form : studies in Anglo-American narratology

Abstract: With the emergence of postclassical narratology, it has become necessary to take stock of ongoing developments against the backdrop of established aspects of research in the field. The contributions to this volume employ some of the recent epistemological and methodological models in an attempt to resolve a number of unsettled issues while charting out potential vistas for new themes in narrative studies.

Aesthetic Illusion as an Effect of Fiction

Abstract: 1. Introduction: Aesthetic Illusion as Reception Phenomenon and as a Problem for Narratology "THE CORRECTIONS is the whole package ... You will laugh, wince, groan, weep [...] and be reminded of why you read serious fiction in the first place." This is one of the blurb advertisements of Jonathan Franzen's bestseller The Corrections (2001), praise which is basically an elaboration of the frequently-used publicity formula "a moving fiction." We are all familiar with both such promises of "pleasures that [...] fiction affords" (cover of The Corrections) and with the pleasures themselves, indeed so familiar that we rarely enquire into the state of mind that renders such responses to fiction possible. Such reactions indicate a deep emotional involvement--usually an empathy with central characters--and, unless we suffer from a delusion, they presuppose aesthetic illusion: a feeling of being recentered in a possible world as if it were (a slice of) life, a feeling that prevails in spite of the fact, and our latent awareness of it, that this impression is triggered by a "mere" artefact. Aesthetic illusion is an attractive effect of the reading process and a common reception phenomenon. In contemporary culture it can be encountered as a response to a plethora of traditional as well as new media, such as the visual arts, the theater, opera, comics, radio drama, film and computer-created virtual realities (provided the recipient maintains some distance), and one must not forget fiction, which continues to have an important share in the illusion-creating media. Curiously, while the cultural presence of aesthetic illusion is quite massive, it has received only modest attention in recent research. The most influential and best study in English is still Ernst Gombrich's Art and lllusion (1960), while the first major collective volume in English dedicated to literary illusionism consists of the proceedings of a conference held fifteen years ago (Burwick and Pape). One should also mention the possible-worlds research of Marie-Laure Ryan (Possible Worlds), who, instead of "aesthetic illusion," speaks of "recentering" (21) and "immersion" (22). German narratology has produced several pioneering studies on aesthetic illusion as an effect of fiction. Werner Strube's unpublished dissertation deserves to be mentioned here, as well as the book publications by Eckhard Lobsien and Manfred Smuda. (1) In my own monograph Asthetische lllusion I was able to draw upon all of these studies. This book and the critical response it has elicited, as well as my other studies on aesthetic illusionism in Shakespeare, lyric poetry, and twentieth-century fiction form the basis of the present essay. On closer inspection, the hesitation of contemporary literary scholars in engaging in a discussion of aesthetic illusion is understandable, for it is a particularly elusive and hence problematic phenomenon: strictly speaking, it is a reception phenomenon located in the recipient's mind, and what goes on there is actually beyond the scope of philology. Therefore there are serious methodological limitations to any purely philological theory of aesthetic illusion--including the present one. Yet this does not mean that literary theorists must have recourse to mere speculation. Apart from introspection--which may, of course, be highly flawed, but can at least provide some clues as to which devices trigger asthetic illusion and to what degree--the principal means are reception testimonies by others. These include evidence from aestheticians and their theories from Aristotle's Poetics onwards, besides comments on reception experiences by the general recipient, and last, but not least, clues deducible from the texts themselves. Such clues are particularly relevant if they play with the expectation of aesthetic illusion and undermine it, notably through self-reflexive metadevices. Although neither textual clues nor readers' testimonies can yield reliable and detailed information on mental processes, such evidence can at least indicate the presence or absence of aesthetic illusion in certain cases; besides, in contrast to the findings of neuropsychology, cognition research, and empirical literary studies, it can also shed light on the past. …

Conceptualizing the Writer-Reader Relationship in Business Prose

Abstract: Writers achieve an appropriate writer-reader relationship in business prose not by merely switching from their own to the reader's viewpoint but by artfully interweaving multiple rhetorical and linguistic elements. The writer-reader relationship is expressed through the many possible combinations of vision and voice, which originate in the textual identities of the implied writer, the implied reader, and, sometimes, other characters. By combining multiple visions and voices, writers create what Bakhtin called intentionally hybrid, internally dialogic language that fulfills a social purpose by reflecting human relationships even when the subject matter is impersonal and technical. You-attitude is but one instance of such language and is not always the best choice. Texts written by Sherron Watkins, former vice president of Enron, illustrate how a writer's decisions about textual identities, vision, and voice may affect the course of corporate events in dramatic, unexpected ways. Keywords: narrative theory; implied reader; implied writer; you-attitude; dialogism; voice; tone; point of view; perspective; Enron ********** "I am incredibly nervous that we will implode in a wave of accounting scandals," Enron Vice President Sherron Watkins wrote in an anonymous letter to Kenneth Lay, chairman of the corporation. "My eight years of Enron work history will be worth nothing on my resume, the business world will consider the past successes as nothing but an elaborate accounting hoax" (see Appendix A). (1) These words began a chain of events that revealed a dramatic corporate scandal and ultimately led to the demise of not only Enron but also Arthur Andersen, its auditor. Investors lost money, employees lost jobs, and the business world lost public respect. Watkins's prophetic words became famous as Enron collapsed. But what makes these words interesting to those who study business language and its impact is the extent to which they violate a central principle of business communication: you-attitude, the expression of a relationship in which writers or speakers intentionally subordinate their priorities to those of readers or listeners. In trying to influence Lay to investigate further, Watkins focuses squarely on her own concerns, fears, and self-interest. To explore the complexities of the writer-reader relationship, in this article I apply concepts from narratology and linguistics to business prose. I address three questions: How should we conceptualize the writer-reader relationship in business prose? What choices must writers make when they express this relationship in a text? Why are such choices important in business practice? I assert that a complete analysis of the writer-reader relationship in business prose must go beyond the traditional concept of you-attitude, which oversimplifies the writer's options. The conceptualization I propose juxtaposes the metaphors of vision and voice in written discourse. I argue that writers achieve an appropriate writer-reader relationship not by merely switching from the writer's to the reader's viewpoint but by artfully interweaving multiple rhetorical and linguistic elements. Writers must define the textual identities of the characters implied in the text: the I, the you, and, sometimes, the others. These identities then lead to choices about whose vision and whose voice the text will reflect. Vision includes not only point of view but also perspective, distance, and focus. Voice--the instantiation of vision in words--encompasses metaphoric parallels with each aspect of literal voice: pitch, inflection, intonation, articulation, pace, and volume. Juxtaposing the implied reader's vision and the implied writer's voice creates what Bakhtin (1981) called intentionally hybrid, internally dialogic language, one form of which constitutes you-attitude. Whereas you-attitude is often considered the quintessential characteristic of good business writing, I assert in this article that this expression of a writer-reader relationship is not always desirable. …

Where Historiographic Metafiction and Narratology Meet: Towards an Applied Cultural Narratology

Abstract: 1. Whither Narratology? The histories and respective achievements of structuralist narratology and German contributions to narrative theory (Erzahltheorie) have recently become the subject of a controversy. While David Darby's article "Form and Content: An Essay in the History of Narratology" pits classical narratology against the history of German narrative theory, arguing that narratology should be remodeled into a contextualist theory of interpretation, other narratologists have criticized both his presentation of German narrative theory and his suggestion that such a "contextualist narratology" necessarily requires the ill-defined concept of the implied author. Monika Fludernik has pointed out that German contributions to narrative studies are much broader and more varied than Darby's essay suggests ("History"). Tom Kindt and Hans-Harald Muller have taken Darby to task for failing to provide convincing reasons for his claims regarding the purported need for a change in narratology's aims and for widening its research domain ("Narratology"). This controversy and the different accounts the participants have offered of the history of narrative theory are interesting not only from the point of view of the light they shed on the complex developments and international ramifications of narratology. They also metonymically illustrate what is at slake in the current debates about the directions into which narratology is moving. Hardcore structuralist narratologists are very sceptical about several of the so-called "new narratologies" collected in David Herman's recent volume Narratologies, suspecting that they will inevitably lead to a contamination that infects "pure" and "neutral" description with the taint of ideology and relativism. In contrast to the purists who want to make "the world safe for narratology," as John Bender aptly put it ("Making"), practitioners of the various postclassical narratologies intrepidly rush in where structuralists fear to tread. Whether or not they are fools in so doing may be an open question, but their work has arguably opened up productive lines of research. Nonetheless, one cannot rail to notice that the question asked in the title of an illuminating collection of articles edited by Kindt and Muller (What is Narratology?) has recently received quite different and even contradictory answers. There no longer seems to be a consensus about either the main aims or objectives of narratology or about the extension of its research domains. Echoing Christine Brooke-Rose's title "Whatever Happened to Narratology?" one may at this stage well ask "Whither narratology?" Instead of reviewing these debates, providing yet another survey of recent developments in narratology, (1) of trying to act as arbiter of hostilities, the present essay pursues three more modest goals: to sketch out some of the premises and concepts of an applied cultural narratology that puts the analytical toolkit developed by narratology in the service of context-sensitive interpretations of novels, to provide a typological overview of new kinds of historical fiction partly based on narratological categories, and to indicate how the latter may be used in order to tease out the epistemological and ethical implications of what has come to be known as "historiographic metafiction." I hope to show that cultural analyses and interpretations of narratives in general, and research on historiographic metafiction in particular, would stand to gain a lot by actually applying the categories provided by narratology. Using historiographic metafiction as a case study for testing the usefulness of a new kind of cultural narratology, I would like to argue that such dichotomies as the one between "the uncontaminated fields of 'classical' narratology" and the "contextualist dimensions of contemporary 'postclassical' narratological scholarship" (Darby, "Form and Context Revisited" 423) should not be exaggerated. They arguably present us with a set of false choices: between text and context, between form and content as well as form and context, between formalism and contextualism, between bottom-up analysis and top-down synthesis, and between "neutral" description and "ideological" evaluation. …

Spelling It Out: Narrative Typologies of Terror

Abstract: Midway through Don DeLillo's Mao II, failed novelist Bill Gray expresses what has become a kind of anthem in the critical attitudes toward terrorism and the anti-aesthetic it represents: For some time now I've had the feeling that novelists and terrorists are playing a zero-sum game.... What terrorists gain, novelists lose. The degree to which they influence mass consciousness is the extent of our decline as shapers of sensibility and thought. The danger they represent equals our own failure to be dangerous. (156-57) Indeed, after the fearsome enormity of the collapse of the twin towers, what possible spectacle could art give us that even comes close to the power of this moment of distilled awe and grief?. What story could be told that would fall anywhere within the dusty perimeter of such an event? Echoing Theodore Adorno, arguing that "writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric," how could any of us entertain an "aesthetic" after that groaning, smoking, blood-soaked monument rose from the ground? The moment of terror and grief, though, like the quote from DeLillo's novel, exposes a tendency to conflate terror's various discourses. But terrorist writing is not all equal, and is of radically different rhetorical modes. I would, in this essay, like to suggest, as a way of disentangling the motives and means of art and terrorism, three different types of terrorist narratives (understanding, of course, the likely overlap between them). Before I do this, however, I would like to underscore the fact that I will not be using the term "narrative" in its usual sense. I am, in this essay, moving away from notions that see narrativity merely in terms of plot, genre, or point-of-view. I am, in my discussions of narrativity, after something at once more basic and more elusive. In the work of some recent writers, (1) narrative is not merely story-telling, or even simply linguistic, but is a structuring principle that precedes language, even gives it birth. Some recent narrative theory, in fact, attempts to rethink the bias of some eighty or more years of theoretical and philosophic thought that locates the principle of human identity-in-creation in language, or the language-like activity of mind. Indeed, the paradigm of language as that which constitutes the human is so pervasive, it has become in many cases virtually invisible. Thus although much recent work demarcates the structuring activity of mind in narrative, oftentimes narrative itself is assumed to be a syntactic, language-based activity, ignoring the possibility that language itself might be a product of narrative. I would like to suggest here that the structural principle of mind is not language, but that language itself represents the outcome of a prior operation of narration: that mind is narration first, is "always already" narration, but narration of a very particular sort. Such a possibility (that narrative represents something more primal than language in mind, that narrative as a process requires agency, but not necessarily human agency) can be glimpsed in some of the foundational texts of poststructuralism. In "Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives," for example, Roland Barthes sets the stage for later discussions of universal narrativity by situating the issue in these terms: "[N]arrative is present in every age, in every place, in every society; it begins with the very history of mankind and there nowhere is nor has been a people without narrative ... narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural: it is simply there, like life itself" (79). Narrative is, Barthes thinks, the one universal of cultural mind, the "always already" of consciousness, something akin to a Kantian a priori, or the narrative insistence of the Freudian Unconscious. This narrative drive is no mere device or filter through which somatic perception is molded or shaped into story and memory; it is, it seems, a first principle, the means by which thought and memory come into being (unlike poetry or essay, which, Barthes feels, are cultural forms, a posteriori structuring principles). …

Beyond (Classical) Narratology: New Approaches to Narrative Theory

Abstract: (2004). Beyond (Classical) Narratology: New Approaches to Narrative Theory. European Journal of English Studies: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 3-11.

The Reader and the Book: Ideology and the Construction of Identity in Narrative Fiction

Abstract: The focus of my research is on the complex interaction between reader, ideology and text, in the context of response to narrative fiction by girls aged eleven to fourteen, in relation to both voluntary and curriculum based reading. I have explored response to narrative in three interwoven contexts: an individual case study based on response to a range of fictional texts; group response to voluntary reading and response in the context of the development of a critical literacy project, based on the class novel, against the background of culture and ideology in Northern Ireland. The questions which I address in my research relate to the nature of the process which creates literary meaning, the relationship between narrative, representation and subjectivity, the ways in which the reader's repertoire influences response and the complex interplay between the values of the reader and the ideology of the text. Central to my thesis is the dynamic role of the reader in realizing the potential of the text and, drawing on the insights of Harding (1967, 1977), I have conceptualized that role as encompassing both spectator and participant modes. All readers, I argue, bring to the text their own repertoires of personal experience, cultural knowledge, values and beliefs and these will have a considerable influence on the reader's response to the text. I examine the relationship between narrative, ideology and subjectivity arguing that narrative, because of its multi-vocal nature, opens up opportunities for resistant as well as consensual readings. I consider how the transaction between reader and text fits into the wider context of the relationship between literary and extra-literary discourse, drawing on a confluence of reader response, cultural theory and narratology. I explore the relationship between the construction of childhood and its representation in narrative fiction written for children, arguing that understandings of childhood are ideological, that changing ideas about childhood are reflected in children's literature and that there is a dialogical relationship between actual childhood and its imaginary construction in narrative fiction. The relationship between reader and text is, I argue, dialogical and ideological. I suggest that narrative is an evaluative context for subjectivity, presenting us with a repertoire of possible selves, which, in the process of negotiating our identities, we match to our own construction of selfhood.

Dostoevsky's The Idiot and the Ethical Foundations of Narrative: Reading, Narrating, Scripting

Abstract: In considering Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot', a novel less easily defined in terms of plot and ideas than his other major fictional works, Sarah Young addresses problems in the novel unresolved by previous interpretations, and in doing so fills a significant gap in Dostoevsky studies.

What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers regarding the Status of a Theory

Abstract: What Is Narratology? Questions and Answers regarding the Status of a Theory. Ed. Tom Kindt and Hans-Harald Miiller. Narratalogia, 1. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2003. vii + 368 pp. $137.20 cloth. De Gruyter's Narratologia series is subtitled "Contributions to Narrative Theory," and it has been inaugurated by a collection devoted to the useful jobs of ground-clearing and organization. The current state of narrative studies makes these jobs unavoidable. After the large-scale attempt to theorize narrative that was the centerpiece of literary structuralism in the 1960s and 70s followed a period (in the 80s and early 90s) of syntheses and summaries but few new ideas and a general downturn in the level of activity. In the past decade, however, an outburst of new initiatives in thinking about narrative has brought with it a renewed sense that interesting work remains to be done on narrative. The problem facing the narrative theorist at the present juncture is that of getting a clear overview: has any substantive knowledge about narrative been achieved and, if so, and how can it be built upon? should future research on narrative be treated as a continuation of earlier work, or as a break from it? which of the new directions will actually lead somewhere and which will prove to be trendy dead ends? These very broad questions form the background of current discussion. The essays in this volume-which come from a 2002 conference in Hamburg sponsored by the Narratology Research Group-concern the narrower issue of the identity of narratology. The problem here is that, taken generally, the study of narrative might involve a great many things, whereas the notion of narratology implies something much more limited-but what? Since Plato and Aristotle, and especially since Henry James, the topic of narrative has been addressed by literary practitioners, belletristic and journalistic critics, scholars, and theorists in a diversity of fields ranging from philosophy to folkloristics; sometimes the object of interest has been a particular narrative work, at other times it has been various features of a corpus, while at others the universal nature of narrative has been postulated as a possible object of inquiry. The term "narratology," coined in the heyday of French structuralism and associated with work by Roland Barthes, Claude Bremond, Gerard Genette, A.-J. Greimas, and Tzvetan Todorov, designated a new specialty in academic literary research: the use of more or less formalized models to endow the study of narrative with systematic procedures and testable criteria. But now, three or four decades later, not only do the articles of structuralist methodological faith stand rejected in a resolutely postmodern era, but students of narrative are interested in a range of narrative-pertinent stuff much wider than tidy-minded structuralists could ever have envisioned, much less accommodated. Briefly, it is content and context that matter to the next generation of investigators, who uniformly disparage the very idea of narrative as primarily or essentially a matter of form. So it is possible to distinguish between two generations of narrative theorists, "classical" and "postclassical" (to adopt what has become a common usage). What is Narratology? includes fourteen essays, all by German scholars except for four (by David Herman, John Pier, Gerald Prince, and Marie-Laure Ryan); of those written by German contributors, seven appear in (usually fluent) translation. Since the goal of the conference was to survey the field ("Questions and Answers regarding the Status of a Theory"), it is understandable that many of the essays include extensive bibliographies. However, they overlap considerably, and take up a seventh of the volume (54 pages out of about 360, not counting some lengthy footnotes, such as the one summarizing the translation history of French structuralists writings into German [161-62nl 12]). A single consolidated Works Cited might have been preferable, despite the editorial trouble it would have taken to assemble. …

Values are Descriptions; or, from Literature to Linguistics and back again by way of keywords : The linguistics: Literature interface

Abstract: As a frame to this paper, I question the still prominent contrast of literary criticism (whose essence lies in evaluation of texts, statements of value) and literary linguistics (often claimed to be rooted in neutral or value-free description), and propose that criticism's value-statements are kinds of description, and linguists' descriptions are value-laden. Within this frame, I discuss the challenge of exploring narrative progression and reader expectation in a recent story by Alice Munro, and in particular the challenge of using corpus analytical methods in the attempt to progress to more thematic or interpretive statements of literary value. Using Wordsmith to identify keywords of the story and its stages, and supplementing this with ideas from sociolinguistics, collocational and narrative studies, I begin to map a developmental lexical 'stream' or core for this story text I argue that such a lexical stream is related (but complexly and obliquely) to matters of theme and plot.

Turning Words on the Page into "Real" People

Abstract: 1. The Power of Illusion In the wake of an ever-increasing interest in the characters of Shakespeare's plays since the end of the eighteenth century, John Wilson in 1829 made the following statement: "Shakespeare's characters have long ceased to be poetical creations, and are now as absolute flesh and blood as any other subject of his Majesty's dominions" (963). The striking neglect of the fact that characters tend to emerge from the page when we read novels, plays, or poems--a neglect that was strengthened by the structuralist fixation on the text--has slowly been overcome in recent times by an increased interest in the process of reading. The phenomenon is, after all, widespread enough. Not only do such figures take on a life of their own in that they repeatedly become the protagonists of new works (for example in the Hamlet novels of Georg Britting and Alfred Doblin or in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead). More important is the fact that figures like Hamlet or Lady Macbeth, Tom Jones or Huck Finn, Stephen Dedalus or Mrs. Dalloway, Blanche Dubois or Willy Loman, Holden Caulfield or Lolita tend to exist autonomously in the memory of those readers or audiences who have "made their acquaintance" in the respective plays and novels. In order to come closer to an adequate analysis of this process of figuring-forth, it will in the first place be necessary to differentiate between on the one hand "literary character" as the totality of the signs in the text that provide clues for the readers' acts of construction and, on the other hand, the dramatised "figures beyond the text" (Cohan) that readers picture on the stage of their imagination during the process of reading. Since the publication of the original German version of this essay, critics like Steven Cohan, Uri Margolin, Laszlo Halasz, Richard J. Gerri, and David W. Allbritton as well as Thomas Koch and Ralf Schneider have helped to overcome the methodological reduction of literary characters to mere "actants" in structuralist narratology and have started to pay tribute to the creative activity of the reader. What we chiefly find in these more recent studies is an interpretation of literary characters as "mental models" in the sense of cognitive psychology? This may solve some analytical problems but creates a new one--it leaves unexplained why in our imagination we do not encounter mere "mental models" but figures often as much alive as those we meet in everyday life. The experience of this encounter with literary characters will be felt most strongly by the literary scholar who still has the ability to read or to watch a film or theater performance without immediately analyzing it. The strength of the illusion becomes apparent in the fact that one almost inevitably gets involved in the fate of the protagonists despite one's theoretical insight into the artificiality or constructedness of literary characters. Admittedly, for the purpose of analysis one must not remain caught up in this illusion; however, neither should one dismiss it. On the contrary, one has to take this effect properly into account and attempt to explain it as the "primary" phenomenon. 2. The Conditions of Figuring-Forth We gain knowledge of literary characters through literary works--this seems fairly clear. On the other hand, such characters really become figured-forth only in the imagination of the reader or viewer. Since the imagining takes place during the so-called "reception" of a work, the elements or factors necessary for the figuration of a literary character are the text, the imagination of the recipient, and the interaction of the two in the process of reading or listening. The object of investigation here is precisely that interaction, the process of transformation that turns some signs or features of a literary text into characters. How is it possible that powerful figures emerge from pages filled with words and sentences as soon as we begin the process of reading? …

Articulation, the letter, and the spirit in the aesthetics of narrative

Abstract: A furthered understanding of the aesthetic aspects of narrative is important to both people and machines who wish to author pleasing narratives. This paper gives an account of the aesthetics of narrative employing the triptych of articulation, the letter, and the spirit as a framework for understanding. The rhetoric of the letter and the spirit, with great intellectual precedent, is used in this work to segregate the mundane and habitual aspects of narrative (the letter) from narrative's mystified, mythical, and aesthetic aspects (the spirit). Articulation, understood as the interplay between the letter and the spirit, has certain aesthetic modes, and these modes and their relationship to connotation, defamiliarization, and myth are discussed.Also central to the aesthetic qualification of articulation is the cultural and cognitive backdrop against which an articulation occurs. This paper will argue that in the culture of our contemporary period, media-driven commodification of narratives has led to the saturation of the cultural narrative space with cliche. If a narrative is to be aesthetic in this environment, it must face the additional challenge of resisting hyperarticulation, as hyperarticulation invites unflattering comparison to known narrative forms and techniques. This paper concludes with a presentation of four strategies which support aesthetic articulation in narratives under the current cultural context - intertextuality, unusual representation, aesthetic signature, and personalization.

The Concept of Narrative: An Analysis of Requiem for a Dream(.com) and Donnie Darko(.com

Abstract: This article will discuss the concept of narrative and how this idea has been defined by writers from various academic specialisations such as film studies, literary studies, narratology and new media studies. This initial discussion of how narrative has variously been conceptualised leads to an analysis of several test case examples of 'official' websites from the films Donnie Darko (dir. Richard Kelly II, USA, 2001) and Requiem for a Dream (dir. Darren Aronofsky, USA, 2000), both still available at www.donniedarko.com and www.requiemforadream.com. The issue of establishing narrative in terms of its defining qualities and limits becomes important in assessing whether these particular test case websites qualify as narratives themselves and how they extend, supplement, reorient and supplant the cinematic texts. The analysis will apply various approaches and techniques from film/literary studies and narratology in an in-depth, close reading of the websites and films. In probing cases that are liminal in ter...

Narrative as a hermeneutical relationship to the unconscious

Abstract: In this article, what seems to have been two central tenets in contemporary psychoanalytic narrative theory are challenged. The one—propounded by Roy Schafer—is that the goal of psychoanalytic work is to furnish the analysand with an alternative narrative. The other—propounded by Donald Spence—is that any story will do, if only it is coherent, consistent, persuasive and encompasses the known “facts”. Basing his critique of the mentioned standpoints on an intersubjective understanding of psychoanalytic work and a concept of interpreting inspired by the existential hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger, the author discusses the nature of the analytic dialogue and the role of transference together with the ethical basis of truth in the analytic project. Finally, it is indicated that there is a limit to analytic working-through, where the analysand's narrative activity must come to a halt and room be left for a resolve, where the analysand may undergo a fundamental transformation.

Foundational Issues in Teaching Cognitive Narratology

Abstract: (2004). Foundational Issues in Teaching Cognitive Narratology. European Journal of English Studies: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 105-127.

Jubilees —between enoch and moses. a narrative reading

Abstract: There is no doubt that the biblical story in Genesis and Exodus, extending from creation to Sinai, forms the backbone of the narrative in Jubilees. Often analyses of Jubilees concentrate on this aspect, without paying sufficient attention to the narrative design in Jubilees itself. In this article some common tools in narratology are applied to focus on Jubilees as a whole. In the narrative structures it appears that the Enochic traditions are formative. Moses is placed in the front of the narrative as a witness not to the torah of the Pentateuch, but to a narrative shaped to give room for the Enochic traditions. Thus Jubilees mediates between the Mosaic and Enochic traditions, using Moses to emphasise the importance of Enoch. The two figures represent two different attitudes toward revelation, the unique concentration on Sinai as the centre of history and the common mythical world-view that the foundational events took place in primeval time.