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.

Cheap Plot Tricks, Plot Holes, and Narrative Design

Abstract: In narrative, plot exists on two levels: the plotting of the author, who creates the storyline; and the plotting of the characters, who set goals, devise plans, schemes and conspiracies, and try to arrange events to their advantage. The plotting of both author and characters is meant to exercise control: for the author, control over the reader, who must undergo a certain experience; for the characters, control over other char- acters and over the randomness of life. But sometimes the goals of the author are at odds with the goals of characters. The author needs to make the characters take par- ticular actions to produce a certain effect on the reader, such as intense suspense, cu- riosity, or emotional involvement; but acting toward this situation defies narrative logic, because is not in the best interest of the characters, or not in line with their per- sonality. In this article I propose to investigate two types of aesthetically deficient plot twists that arise from this conflict between author and character goals. One in- volves an active intervention by the author, an attempt to fix the problem through hackneyed devices; I call this "cheap plot tricks" (henceforth CPT). The other results from ignoring the problem, or covering it up, a strategy (or omission) that leads to what is known among film writers as "plot holes" (henceforth PH). Through this em- phasis on the kind of events that makes the sophisticated reader groan, I will be breaking away from the almost exclusively descriptive tradition of both classical and postclassical narratology, and I will adopt an evaluative stance closer to the prescrip- tive spirit of Aristotle's Poetics.

The Concept of Performativity in Narratology

Abstract: This essay traces the travelling concept of performativity across the field of narratology. Distinguishing different forms of interdisciplinary transfer, the text offers a definition of performativity in narratology and attempts to give a systematic account of how the concept has been adapted to narratological research. I argue that the concept of performativity can refer to two distinct levels of the narratological investigation – to the story level and to the narrator's agency or act of narration, and that this act can also be considered in a wider pragmatic and cultural context. Special attention is given to the relation between the concepts of performativity and performance on the one hand, and the relation between performativity and speech act theory on the other.

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.

Story and Emotion : A Study in Affective Narratology

Abstract: In this book perspectives from affective narratology are applied to study emotional structures in literary works of Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Ibsen, Hamsun, J.P. Jacobsen, Schoenberg and Knausgaard. Based on perspectives from literary studies, philosophy, cognitive psychology, neurobiology and media studies, professor Per Thomas Andersen analyzes characters in the novels, temporal and spatial aspects of the narratives, sources of emotional impulses and different ways in which the streams of affects turn out to be as important as events in the narrative style of the chosen authors. Per Thomas Andersen is professor of Scandinavian Literature at the University of Oslo.