Showing papers on "Narratology published in 2013"

A narrative approach to strategy-as-practice

Abstract: The strategy-as-practice project would benefit from greater consideration of narratological concerns Narratorship, the formulation and performance of narratives, is an important strategy practice; narratives (stories) are key tools of strategists; and narratological perspectives generally may usefully inform strategy research, leading to less scientistic and more reflexive scholarship Five specific ways in which attention to narratology can assist the strategy-as-practice agenda are considered: humanising strategy research, dealing with equivocality, accounting adequately for polyphony, understanding outcomes, and sensitivity to issues of power While storytelling approaches have considerable strengths, they also have limitations, and are offered as a supplement to, not replacement of, existing perspectives

Computational Modeling of Narrative

Abstract: The field of narrative (or story) understanding and generation is one of the oldest in natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence (AI), which is hardly surprising, since storytelling is such a fundamental and familiar intellectual and social activity. In recent years, the demands of interactive entertainment and interest in the creation of engaging narratives with life-like characters have provided a fresh impetus to this field. This book provides an overview of the principal problems, approaches, and challenges faced today in modeling the narrative structure of stories. The book introduces classical narratological concepts from literary theory and their mapping to computational approaches. It demonstrates how research in AI and NLP has modeled character goals, causality, and time using formalisms from planning, case-based reasoning, and temporal reasoning, and discusses fundamental limitations in such approaches. It proposes new representations for embedded narratives and fictional entities, for assessing the pace of a narrative, and offers an empirical theory of audience response. These notions are incorporated into an annotation scheme called Narrative ML. The book identifies key issues that need to be addressed, including annotation methods for long literary narratives, the representation of modality and habituality, and characterizing the goals of narrators. It also suggests a future characterized by advanced text mining of narrative structure from large-scale corpora and the development of a variety of useful authoring aids. This is the first book to provide a systematic foundation that integrates together narratology, AI, and computational linguistics. It can serve as a narratology primer for computer scientists and an elucidation of computational narratology for literary theorists. It is written in a highly accessible manner and is intended for use by a broad scientific audience that includes linguists (computational and formal semanticists), AI researchers, cognitive scientists, computer scientists, game developers, and narrative theorists.

Narrative Research in Applied Linguistics

Abstract: This book brings together contributions from various researchers, providing an overview of narrative research approaches and demonstrating how these work in practice. A broad range of approaches are covered, from well-established and well-known thematic analysis (particularly of 'big stories'), to the more recent sociolinguistic discourse analysis of 'small stories', and the innovative analysis and presentation of visual and performance data such as drawings and drama. This overview includes not just an illustration of narrative research, but the methodological processes which underpin it, relating these to relevant narrative theory. The book, therefore, is both a how-to-do narrative research text and a presentation of narrative studies, providing case study examples and ideas for further research.

Historical Tales and National Identity: An introduction to narrative social psychology

Abstract: Social psychologists argue that people’s past weighs on their present. Consistent with this view, Historical Tales and National Identity outlines a theory and a methodology which provide tools for better understanding the relation between the present psychological condition of a society and representations of its past. Author Janos Laszlo argues that various kinds of historical texts including historical textbooks, texts derived from public memory (e.g. media or oral history), novels, and folk narratives play a central part in constructing national identity. Consequently, with a proper methodology, it is possible to expose the characteristic features and contours of national identities. In this book Laszlo enhances our understanding of narrative psychology and further elaborates his narrative theory of history and identity. He offers a conceptual model that draws on diverse areas of psychology - social, political, cognitive and psychodynamics - and integrates them into a coherent whole. In addition to this conceptual contribution, he also provides a major methodological innovation: a content analytic framework and software package that can be used to analyse various kinds of historical texts and shed new light on national identity. In the second part of the book, the potential of this approach is empirically illustrated, using Hungarian national identity as the focus. The author also extends his scope to consider the potential generalizations of the approach employed. Historical Tales and National Identity will be of great interest to a broad range of student and academic readers across the social sciences and humanities: in psychology, history, cultural studies, literature, anthropology, political science, media studies, sociology and memory studies.

Kairos and Comics: Reading Human Rights Intercontextually in Joe Sacco's Graphic Narratives

Abstract: Although the graphic narrative genre is increasingly being utilized to represent human rights atrocities in complex ways, scholarship on this topic tends to focus on the analysis of issues of historical representation Therefore, this essay contributes to this conversation a nuanced understanding of contextual reading practices in human rights discourse by analyzing Joe Sacco’s Palestine (2001) and Footnotes in Gaza (2009) through the rhetorical concept of kairos and current theories of comics narratology If kairos draws attention to the layered historical contexts operating within Sacco’s graphic narratives as they stake claims for human rights in Palestine and comics studies scholarship focuses on the spatio-temporal dynamics of the graphic narrative form, then together these critical approaches can disrupt the linear notions of time and bounded spaces involved in the denial of Palestinians’ rights to property, land, and return Such an approach draws attention to the urgency of Sacco’s human rights project even while he questions its efficacy

From small stories to networked narrative: The evolution of personal narratives in Facebook status updates

Abstract: This article addresses the emergence of networked narration found in Facebook updates. Drawing on anthropological approaches to co-tellership (Ochs & Capps, 2001), we trace how storyworlds are co-constructed by multiple narrators via the communicative affordances which have developed in the Facebook status update: namely, the practices of commenting, liking, linking, tagging, photo-sharing, and marking geographical location. Our longitudinal analysis of 1800 updates elicited from 60 participants over a period of four years suggests that the rise of what we call a ‘networked narrative’ allows individuals to participate collectively in the construction of ‘shared stories’ (Georgakopoulou, 2007), and through this process for narrators to co-construct their social identities through their interactions with others. We argue that the distribution of storytelling as it takes place on Facebook may be found in other online and offline contexts, and challenges earlier, linear models of narrative form that have dominated discourse-analytic and literary-critical narratology.

Narrative social work: Theory and Application

Abstract: Introduction to narrative theory (with Brandi Estey-Burtt) Narrative, human rights and social justice The narrative self and social work Social work ethics and narrative Narrative and social policy Plot, characterisation and rhetoric in child protection The narrative self in mental health discourse (by Brandi Estey-Burtt) Meta-narratives of disability (with Mary-Dan Johnston) Conclusion.

Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, J.A. Cuddon, 5th Edition

Abstract: With new entries and sensitive edits, this fifth edition places J.A. Cuddon’s indispensable dictionary firmly in the 21st Century. Written in a clear and highly readable style. Comprehensive historical coverage extending from ancient times to the present day. Broad intellectual and cultural range. Expands on the previous edition to incorporate the most recent literary terminology. New material is particularly focused in areas such as gender studies and queer theory, post-colonial theory, post-structuralism, post-modernism, narrative theory, and cultural studies. Existing entries have been edited to ensure that topics receive balanced treatment.

Why Teach Literature and Medicine? Answers from Three Decades

Abstract: In this essay, I look back at some of the earliest attempts by the first generation of literature-and-medicine scholars to answer the question: Why teach literature and medicine? Reviewing the development of the field in its early years, I examine statements by practitioners to see whether their answers have held up over time and to consider how the rationales they articulated have expanded or changed in the following years and why Greater emphasis on literary criticism, narrative ethics, narrative theory, and reflective writing has influenced current work in the field in ways that could not have been foreseen in the 1970s The extraordinary growth of interest and work in the field nationally and, especially since 1996, internationally has included practitioners in many additional areas such as disability studies, film studies, therapeutic writing, and trauma studies Along with the emergence of narrative medicine, this diverse community of scholars and practitioners—affiliated more through their use of narrative methodologies than the teaching of literature—makes the perennial challenge of evaluation and assessment even more complicated

The Unexpected: Narrative Temporality and the Philosophy of Surprise

Abstract: This is a critical and philosophical investigation into the unforeseeable and the surprising in narrative and life. This new study asks how stories affect the way we think about time and, in particular, how they condition thinking about the future. Focusing on surprise and the unforeseeable, the book argues that stories are mechanisms that reconcile what is taking place with what will have been. This relation between the present and the future perfect offers a grammatical formula quite different from our default notions of narrative as recollection or recapitulation. It promises new understandings of the reading process within the strange logic of a future that is already complete. It also points beyond that to some of the key temporal concepts of our epoch: prediction and unpredictability, uncertainty, the event, the untimely and the messianic. The argument is worked out in new readings of Sarah Waters' Fingersmith, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending. It is an original discussion of the relation of time and narrative. It is an important intervention in narratology. It is a striking general argument about the workings of the mind. It provides an overview of the question of surprise in philosophy and literature.

The simultaneity of experience: cultural identity, magical realism and the artefactual in digital storytelling

Abstract: This paper explores how students, as multimodal storytellers, can weave powerful narratives blending modes, genres, artefacts and literary conventions to represent the real and imagined in their lives. Part of a larger ethnographic case study of student writing in a middle years class for immigrant students learning English as an additional language, the research featured in this paper is framed by a theory of artefactual literacies, narrative theory – particularly the genre of magical realism – and cultural studies, specifically notions of representation and cultural identity. The theoretical emphases on the artefactual, structural and representational aspects of multimodal narratives informs a multilayered, fine-grained approach to analysing students’ digital narrative poems using the tools of critical discourse analysis, literary analysis and a visual analytic framework developed for analysing student-produced digital photographs. This process is applied to a selected example, Gabriel's ‘My Name Is’ narrative, a story that plays with elements of magical real-ism to explore the simultaneity of his experience as an immigrant youth. The illustrative example speaks to the power of the ‘fantastical’ in literacy pedagogies that seek to take seriously students’ cultural identities and their visions for new realities.

A Garden of Orismological Delights: A Review of the Fifth Edition of J.A. Cuddon’s A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, revised by M.A.R. Habib (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013)

Abstract: A Garden of Orismological Delights: A Review of the Fifth Edition of J.A. Cuddon's A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, revised by M.A.R. Habib (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013)The publication of the fifth edition of Cuddon's A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory by Wiley-Blackwell is a much awaited event, considering the popularity the dictionary has enjoyed. Apart from M.A.R. Habib, the editor who revised the edition, there are four associate editors: Matthew Birchwood, Vedrana Velickovic, Martin Dines and Shanyn Fiske, all of them academics associated with English or American universities. The release of the dictionary must have been a challenge. The fourth edition was published in 1998, which makes this one the first Cuddon dictionary in the twenty-first century.The reader's attention is attracted to etymological explanations (though they are not always present), and a variety of subjects; some defined in a handy, succinct way, others described in miniature essays which often span a broad time context. Apart from respectable-looking derivations from Greek and Latin, there are words of French, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Sanskrit or Old Norse origin, to mention the instances that immediately catch the eye.However, the authors and editors of such gigantic projects always experience both blindness and insight. Cuddon was clearly aware of that, as specified in the preface to the third edition. Did his queries affect the current version? This is what he said: "I am familiar with Classical, European, Slavonic and Near Eastern literatures and have some knowledge of the literatures of North America and of Commonwealth nations. But my knowledge of Oriental literatures and those of Spanish America and South America is limited." While the statement points to the immense erudition of the late author, my locatedness makes me frown on the juxtaposition of European and Slavonic, as if Slavonic literatures were not a part of Europe. I do not assume Cuddon only meant the Asian territory of Russia. Geographical nuances aside, Slavonic literatures are present in the fifth edition in a very selective way. Probably the involvement of the editor whose roots are in former Yugoslavia accounts for some references to the literature of that part of Europe. There are, of course, references to Russian literature. As for Poland, Henryk Sienkiewicz is mentioned in the entry on historical novel (though his novels can hardly be called an "imperialist" project, 333). Jerzy Grotowski appears in an entry on Theatre Laboratory, but the widely acclaimed Stanislaw Lem goes unnoticed in the science fiction entry, and so does Jan Kochanowski in the entry on lament, even though his Laments (translated into English by Baranczak and Heaney) remain unique in Renaissance literature. South America continues to be a terra incognita, though gaucho literature has been given a separate entry, while South American writers are mentioned in the discussion of magic realism. Postimperial peripheries, i.e. New Zealand and Australia with the specificity of their fertile indigenous cultures and terms derived from them are not really acknowledged; the same would go for most of Africa. Discussing new additions, M. A. R. Habib mentions terms from "Chinese, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Indian" (vii). It is interesting to see that far from being insular, the field that the dictionary mines has been expanding throughout successive editions and will, hopefully, do so in the future.It is certainly interesting to see the new developments, that is, the entries related to the material advertised on the blurb, namely "gender studies and queer theory, postcolonial theory, poststructuralism, postmodernism, narrative theory, and cultural studies." Surprisingly, the term "gender" is not given a separate entry to explain how it has been operating, as compared to another key term in the feminist discourse, i.e. "sexual difference." While there are interesting entries on particular terms such as "abjection" and "chora," both relating to Kristeva's description of the semiotic, her oeuvre, like that of Irigaray and Cixous, is not given too much attention in the entry on feminist criticism. …

Music and Levels of Narration in Film: Steps across the Border

Abstract: This is the first book-length study of the narratology of film music. It brings together work on film music theory and analysis and the literature of narratology and film narratology. It proposes a narratological toolkit for the description and analysis of music in film. It is an indispensable resource for anyone researching or studying film music or film narratology. The first book-length study of film music narratology, "Music and Levels of Narration in Film" brings together the so-far piecemeal scholarly contributions on the subject. Extending the discussion beyond the current fixation on the diegetic/non-diegetic distinction (music that is or is not understood as part of the story world of a film), Heldt systematically discusses music on different levels of narration: from the extra-fictional to 'focalizations' of subjectivity, and music's movement between them. Heldt proposes a toolkit of narratological concepts for understanding film music and introduces the reader to the less widely known French and German language literature on the subject. Including a study of genres and of the narrative strategies of music in individual films, this book is an indispensable resource for anyone researching or studying film music or film narratology.

Unnatural Narratology: The Systematic Study of Anti‐Mimeticism

Abstract: Unnatural narratology is a new field within narrative theory that seeks to focus on the anti-mimeticism of many fictional narratives. In other words, the research program proposed by unnatural narrative theorists involves the systematic study of the various ways in which fictional narratives deviate from “natural” cognitive frames, i.e., real-world understandings of time, space, and other human beings. In a second step, unnatural narratologists deal with the interpretative implications or potential functions of such deviations, i.e., the question of what the unnatural might mean or communicate to us. This article focuses on the cognitive branch within unnatural narratology.

Narrative across Versions: Narratology Meets Genetic Criticism

Abstract: What can narrative theory and analysis learn from the study of sketches, notes, and manuscripts? Leading narratologists, such as Dorrit Cohn, Gerard Genette, and Franz K. Stanzel, have visited the factory of the text, as Genette calls it, to corroborate an argument about the nature of narrative in general or the composition of a particular narrative. However, these excursions have not led to a principled dialogue between genetic criticism and narrative theory. By following major narratologists on their paths to versions of narratives, this essay investigates the possibilities of combining narrative theory and narratological analysis, on the one hand, with manuscript studies and genetic criticism, on the other hand. To specify our claims about this interdisciplinary combination of approaches—the study of narrative across versions—we analyze two works that challenge narrative conventions, “Lessness” and The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett. This two-part case study focuses on the levels of “narrative” and “narration,” respectively, and shows how, on the one hand, genetic criticism can provide data to corroborate a narratological analysis and how, on the other hand, narratology can serve as an aid to the genetic examination of the narrative’s development across versions.

Whole Life Narratives and the Self

Abstract: A narrative theory of the self offers expla- nations of the holistic relationship between a mental content and other mental contents, as well as the rela- tionship between an experience and its subject. For this reason, it offers an attractive alternative to atomistic psychological theories of personal identity, in which a person is defined using memory and other relationships grounded on discrete, impersonal experiences. Narra- tive theories often require a narrative of the entirety of a person's life, which is an implausible requirement. My recommendation is that the narrative account be applied only to threads within a person's life. This leaves us with a notion of a person that does not necessarily require a complete narrative unity, but is a bundle of narrative threads, with links in consciousness and the unconscious. Understanding this can provide a suit- able context for engaging with patients with disorders of the self.

L’enseignement de la médecine narrative peut-il être une réponse à l’attente de formation des étudiants à la relation médecin–malade ?

Abstract: Summary Introduction Coming from literature and medicine and medical humanities north American seminars, narrative medicine has applied narratology for analyzing patients’ discourse and has been taught during a decade. Methods At Paris Descartes School of Medicine a twenty-hour narrative medicine elective program including whole class lectures and writing and reading small group exercises for second year medical students has been assessed using satisfaction questionnaires. Results Although several students were uncomfortable with the first writing and reading exercises, the whole satisfaction scores demonstrate that this new program is very well appreciated even when students did not choose this program because they were interested with the patient physician relationship. These results have been confirmed when all students state this program should be continued and when half of them state this program should be offered to more students or made mandatory. Discussion The primary focus on literary characteristics of patients’ and physicians’ discourses, without ignoring psychoanalysis theory, has shown to be safe for young students. Writing exercises are encouraged but not mandatory, and reading is optional if ever they feel embarrassed after producing their own texts. Narrative medicine impact on students’ attitudes and behaviors has now to be assessed before implementing new educational programs.

The Shaping of Narrative in Polybius

Abstract: The narrative artistry of Polybius has received relatively little scholarly attention. Critics have tended to discuss his reflections on the various issues presented in his work or to use him as a source of valuable information about the historical period that he records. This volume, which draws on narratology's analytical tools, focuses instead on the narrative of the Histories, exploring the sophisticated narrative techniques that have gone into shaping it. In doing so, it pays particular attention to the ways the formal aspects of the text contribute to promoting Polybius' thematic concerns. Its aim is not only to present the Histories as the work of an author who has taken pains to provide us with a carefully structured story, but also to illustrate how interpretations of this story can be enriched by a sensitivity to factors such as chronological displacements and variations of focalization.

What Really Is Unnatural Narratology

Abstract: We are always happy to clarify our work, discuss our ideas, explain our concepts further, and, for that matter, rethink our terms, arguments, and positions. Th is is the job of any intellectual, and it is especially important when one is developing a new conceptual paradigm. Hence, we would like to thank David Herman, the editor of Storyworlds, for giving us the opportunity to write a response to Tobias Klauk and Tillman Koppe’s “Reassessing Unnatural Narratology: Problems and Prospects.” Th eir piece is very polemical, but we still welcome the opportunity to set the record straight about what unnatural narratology does— and does not— aim to achieve.1 We recognize that we are advancing some oft en diffi cult, unusual, or unprecedented ideas that, due to their novelty, are liable to legitimate misinterpretation. Th erefore, in our response, we will do our best to (re)state our positions in the clearest possible terms.

The Chief Concern of Medicine: The Integration of the Medical Humanities and Narrative Knowledge into Medical Practices

Abstract: Unlike any existing studies of the medical humanities, "The Chief Concern of Medicine" brings to the examination of medical practices a thorough---and clearly articulated---exposition of the nature of narrative. The book builds on the work of linguistics, semiotics, narratology, and discourse theory and examines numerous literary works and narrative "vignettes" of medical problems, situations, and encounters. Throughout, the book presents usable expositions of the ways storytelling organizes itself to allow physicians and other healthcare workers (and even patients themselves) to be more attentive to and self-conscious about the information---the "narrative knowledge"---of the patient's story.

First Steps towards a Unified Theory for Interactive Digital Narrative

Abstract: As the domain of Interactive Digital Narrative matures, it becomes increasingly important for researchers to understand the conceptual differences and underlying theories in the different approaches. This paper presents new theoretical perspectives on the fragmented theory and practice within the domain and proposes first steps towards a unified theoretical framework for the domain. The paper is informed by the discussions between theorists and practitioners at two workshops held by the authors.

Narrative. 2nd ed.

Abstract: Human beings have constantly told stories, presented events and placed the world into narrative form. This activity suggests a very basic way of looking at the world, yet, this book argues, even the most seemingly simple of stories is embedded in a complex network of relations. Paul Cobley traces these relations, considering the ways in which humans have employed narrative over the centuries to ‘re-present’ time, space and identity. This second, revised and fully updated edition of the successful guidebook to narrative covers a range of narrative forms and their historical development from early oral and literate forms through to contemporary digital media, encompassing Hellenic and Hebraic foundations, the rise of the novel, realist representations, narratives of imperialism, modernism, cinema, postmodernism and new technologies. A final chapter reviews the way that narrative theory in the last decade has re-orientated definitions of narrative. Written in a clear, engaging style and featuring an extensive glossary of terms, this is the essential introduction to the history and theory of narrative.

Love from Beyond the Grave: The Epistolary Ghost-Story in Phlegon of Tralles

Abstract: The collection of paradoxa attributed to Phlegon of Tralles, a freedman of the emperor Hadrian, is preserved in a single manuscript, of which the beginning is missing. This chapter deals with the first item in the collection, a justly famous story of the supernatural, which has enjoyed a considerable Nachleben , in the work of Goethe, Washington Irving, Theophile Gautier, and Anatole France, to name but four. It has not exactly been over-studied in modern scholarship, and interest has focused predominantly on what it tells us about ancient belief in ghosts, reconstruction of a putative Urgeschichte , and its relation to similar stories in the folklore of other cultures. Little attention has been paid to its extraordinarily sophisticated narratology, its epistolary form, and the nature of its fictionality. Keywords:epistolary ghost-story; philosophy; Phlegon of Tralles; story of supernatural

The Morphology of the Labour Party's One Nation Narrative: Story, Plot and Authorship

Abstract: By applying narrative theory to the party political texts emerging within the UK Labour Party after 2010, which make up the corpus of One Nation discourse, we can grasp the underlying significance of this ideational revision of Labour Party and leftist thought. Through an identification and analysis of the sequence of texts and their constitution as a "story" that interpolates an underlying "plot," we can see how a revision of Labour's "tale" offers to leadership a new party discourse appropriate to it, mediating-if not reconciling-the problematic duality of narrative authorship by both party and leader.

LIFE IS A JOURNEY: Source–path–goal structure in the videogames “Half-Life 2”, “Heavy Rain”, and “Grim Fandango”

Abstract: The debate between narrativists and ludologists has long enlivened discussions among game theorists. Should videogames be seen as an offshoot of (film) stories, and thus be studied primarily from the perspective of narratology? Or do they represent a truly different phenomenon, and thus require an analytic approach that has nothing to gain from narratology? In this paper we intend not so much to solve this conundrum as suggest how it has arisen in the first place, by showing what journey stories and videogames that involve the movement of the player’s avatar have in common. Our central claim is that both journey stories and such games involve physical movement and quests, and moreover are based on some sort of ‘story’, but that only the stories allow for rich mappings of the conceptual metaphor PURPOSIVE ACTIVITY IS MOVEMENT TOWARD A DESTINATION. If our explanations make sense, they can contribute both to the classification and theorization of videogames and to the expansion of conceptual metaphor theory into the realm of videogames.