Narratology

About: Narratology is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2833 publications have been published within this topic receiving 50998 citations. The topic is also known as: narrative theory.

An Automated Pipeline for Character and Relationship Extraction from Readers Literary Book Reviews on Goodreads.com

Abstract: Reader reviews of literary fiction on social media, especially those in persistent, dedicated forums, create and are in turn driven by underlying narrative frameworks In their comments about a novel, readers generally include only a subset of characters and their relationships, thus offering a limited perspective on that work Yet in aggregate, these reviews capture an underlying narrative framework comprised of different actants (people, places, things), their roles, and interactions that we label the “consensus narrative framework” We represent this framework in the form of an actant-relationship story graph Extracting this graph is a challenging computational problem, which we pose as a latent graphical model estimation problem Posts and reviews are viewed as samples of sub graphs/networks of the hidden narrative framework Inspired by the qualitative narrative theory of Greimas, we formulate a graphical generative Machine Learning (ML) model where nodes represent actants, and multi-edges and self-loops among nodes capture context-specific relationships We develop a pipeline of interlocking automated methods to extract key actants and their relationships, and apply it to thousands of reviews and comments posted on Goodreadscom We manually derive the ground truth narrative framework from SparkNotes, and then use word embedding tools to compare relationships in ground truth networks with our extracted networks We find that our automated methodology generates highly accurate consensus narrative frameworks: for our four target novels, with approximately 2900 reviews per novel, we report average coverage/recall of important relationships of >80% and an average edge detection rate of >89% These extracted narrative frameworks can generate insight into how people (or classes of people) read and how they recount what they have read to others 1

Story Generation System Based on Propp Theory as a Mechanism in Narrative Generation System

Abstract: Propp's folktale theory is an origin and a foundation of narratology. We have been studying story generation system reorganized Propp theory to make story grammar. Story or narrative generation system can become a strong mechanism for introducing dynamical and flexible feature into computer game and digital entertainment. This paper proposes a renewal version of Propp based story generation system. The difference from previous versions is to use comparatively large scale conceptual dictionary for verb and noun concepts.

Desire and the Female Protagonist: A Critique of Feminist Narrative Theory

Abstract: When, at the beginning of Fay Weldon's The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1983), Ruth decides she can no longer endure her husband's infidelity and emotional abuse, she articulates her desires and forms a plan of action to fulfill them. "I want revenge," she states, "I want power. I want money. I want to be loved and not love in return" (43). In moving from passive acquiescence to active desire, Ruth breaks several rules. First, and most obviously, she breaks the rules of feminine behavior, what she herself describes as "The Litany of the Good Housewife." Secondly, she alters a fundamental tenet of traditional narrative: that the female principle be passive, rather than active. And, finally, her behavior breaks with feminist theories of narrative that see in Ruth's aggressive, even destructive activity a repetition of patriarchal norms as they are traditionally articulated by narrative. Stories such as Ruth's, in which the female protagonist emulates masculine narrative tropes, pose serious problems for femi nist narrative theories. In this article, I will trace such theories, exploring their rationale but arguing that they prescribe a narrative form that precludes female desire and action. The story of Weldon's she-devil has been read as a reworking of the Faust legend, [1] and, indeed, that narrative, particularly in Goethe's Romantic version, provides a rich contrast between how masculine desire and activity relate to narrative and how Ruth's claim to desire and activity initiate narrative. [2] Faust, like Ruth, lays claim to desire and in fact predicates his life narrative on the ability to desire endlessly. As Peter Brooks points out, Freud refers to Faust in Beyond the Pleasure Principle as "pre-eminently the representation of man's unquenchable striving" (54). According to Brooks's theories of narrative, this Faustian striving creates narrative; as he explains, "desire is always there at the start of narrative, often in a state of initial arousal, often having reached a state of intensity such that movement must be created, action undertaken, change begun" (38). Faust's articulation of his desires and of his will to desire translates into narrative action, the striving forward according to a linear, teleological movement. If Ruth shares with Faust this intensity of, and commitment to, desire, should her story not take on the same qualities--an active striving towards a goal? Unfortunately for Ruth the association of desire and action with masculinity (in the linear model Brooks describes) means that narrative movement is suspect--doubly so, insofar as it defies both conventional assumptions of how female protagonists behave and certain feminist assumptions of how women's stories should be structured. According to such assumptions, conventional narratives such as the Faust legend, and indeed, narrative itself, are incapable of expressing feminine desire and thus must be rejected in favor of other forms, most specifically, the lyric. In contrast to the masculine, linear narrative desire Brooks describes as "the arousal that creates the narratable as a condition of tumescence, appetency, ambition, quest, and gives narrative a forward-looking intention" (103), feminist theory posits a lyric timelessness connected to women's bodies and feminine desire. For example, Julia Kristeva suggests that "there are cycles, gestation, the eternal recurrence of a biological rhythm which conforms to that of nature and imposes a temporality whose stereotyping may shock, but whose regularity and unison with what is experienced as extra-subjective time, cosmic time, occasion vertiginous vision and unnameable jouissance" (191). The derivation of lyric desire from the pre-Oedipal, that is, from before the subject's entry into the linear time of history and narrative further emphasizes lyric "timelessness." Thus, as Susan Stanford Friedman explains, lyric discourse replicates the desire for the imagined early mother-child bond while narrative discourse reflects the later story dominated by the father. …