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.

How Stories Make Us Feel: Toward an Embodied Narratology - eScholarship

Abstract: How do stories often evoke intense feelings and sensations in their readers? This essay explores that question with a new combination of insights from neuroscience and literary theory, while also assessing the difficulties as well as the potential gains of such interdisciplinary research. The authors lay the groundwork for a neurocritical embodied narratology that incorporates both the critiques of traditional humanism within literary studies and of classic cognitivism within neuroscience. Their methodological approach focuses on Feeling of Body (in contrast to Theory of Mind), which may be considered the outcome of a basic functional mechanism instantiated by our brain-body system. Feeling of Body is also a foundational aspect of liberated Embodied Simulation, a process enabling a more direct and less cognitively mediated access to the world of narrated others and mediating our capacity to share the meaning of their actions, basic motor intentions, feelings, and emotions, thus grounding our identification with and connectedness to narrated characters. Through case studies of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Dante Alighieri’s Vita nuova, the authors argue that literary texts rely on Feelings of Body communicated by the authors to their readers, and, in turn, experienced by readers simulating those experiences through the sensory-motor networks common to human beings.

Lost in the Gutter: Within and Between Frames in Narrative and Narrative Theory

Abstract: One of the most difficult and confusing of narratological concepts is that of the "narrative frame." While numerous studies refer to and examine the frame, its defin- ition remains somewhat elusive. The central reason for this is the sheer quantity of concepts and ideas to which this singular appellation refers. Internal narrators and narratives, paratexts, advertisements, blurbs, the covers of a book: all of these have been referred to as "frames," in addition to more metaphorical applications. In "Framing in Wuthering Heights," for example, John Matthews looks not only at "em- bedded narratives," but also at the metaphorical frame of the human body, and the general concept of boundaries in order to elucidate how the novel explores "empty middles" and Lacanian psycholinguistic "lack." That is, a look at a more or less ob- jectively identifiable narrative feature (narratives within other narratives) is soon treated figuratively, as "liminality" of both form and content, generating a metaphor- ical slippage that may be productive for understanding the individual novel, but is less so for understanding the concept itself. Indeed, as I will argue, constitutive of the difficulty in pinpointing the term is the link between the literary frame and framing in the visual arts, particularly painting. Some of the earliest discussions of the liter- ary frame attempt to map the typical notion of the picture frame onto literature with problematic and confusing results. In order to address this problem, I divide this essay into two primary parts. First, I discuss the shortcomings of the "picture frame" model, particularly in its con- flation of two distinct concepts: the physical liminality of frames and their capacity to direct interpretation. Through a use of a simple two-axis graph, I illustrate how the conflation of these two functions blurs understanding of the various kinds of frames

Fictionality, Narrative Modes, and Vicarious Storytelling

Abstract: One of the key issues in the interplay between artistic and everyday narrative practices is the question whether some modes of telling are specific or exclusive to one or the other Whereas in contemporary narrative studies it is a commonplace to understand everyday oral narratives as a prototype of all narrative forms, the traffic from artistic, fictional narratives toward everyday storytelling has received much less attention However, socionarratology, for example, reminds us of the cultural and conventional basis for all human interaction and narrative sense-making In 1999, David Herman postulated this integrated, narrative-analytical approach which he termed socionarratology, a conceptual model that "situates stories in a constellation of linguistic, cognitive, and contextual factors" (Herman 219) Matti Hyvarinen ("Expectations and Experientiality"), drawing on the idea of socionarratology, points out how the expected in the form of generic models and cultural scripts shapes both literary and everyday narratives Yet, he has also concluded that there might, after all, be significant differences in literary and everyday narratives especially when it comes to mind reading or mind attribution (Hyvarinen, "Mind Reading" 238) Jarmila Mildorf ("Thought Presentation") showed how storytellers may circumvent the problems surrounding mind attribution in everyday storytelling by resorting to other, more indirect means of thought presentation, such as constructed dialogue Fictionality, understood--among other things--as specific ways to represent minds in narratives also outside of fiction, clearly needs to be further studied The signposts of fictionality are usually understood to include paratextual signals, the synchronic relation between story and discourse, the dissociation of the author and the narrator, and the representation of thought and consciousness (Cohn, "Signposts" 800; Grishakova 65) To offer a rough outline, one could say that fictionality studies today emphasize either paratextuality (eg, Walsh, The Rhetoric), authors and their communicative intentions (eg, Nielsen and Phelan), or narrative modes of consciousness representation; our approach falls into the last category (Hatavara and Mildorf) Since the last category is the only one to do with narrative discourse modes per se, that is what our article concentrates on in the effort to study the traffic from the fictional to the everyday in narrative means of mind representation We understand fictionality as a conglomeration of narrative discourse modes characteristic of generic fiction but not confined to it This partly follows and extends the tradition of discourse-narratological studies on fictionality Even though this tradition searched for "fiction-specific" narrative modes (Cohn, Distinction 2; "Signposts" 779), it is worth noticing that the possibility of expanding fictional modes beyond fiction was recognized from an early stage on Dorrit Cohn pointed out almost thirty years ago that narratology was unaware "of the places where its findings are specific to the fictional domain and need to be modified before they can apply to neighboring narrative precincts" (Cohn, "Signposts" 800) Using a life story interview as our test case we identify signposts of fictionality, analyze how they function in a nonfictional environment and try to point out issues requiring further theoretical modification In order to account for cognitive and contextual as well as linguistic factors of stories, and to do justice to the nature of life story interviews both as personal testimony and as a semiotic object, we introduce the term cross-fictionality to characterize a narrative where the frame of reference is nonfictional but the narrative modes include those that are conventionally regarded as fictional Therefore, cross-fictionality denotes narrative features that are characteristic of fiction but are also able to cross to other narrative environments …

The Point of Stories: On Narrative Communication and Its Cognitive Functions

Abstract: The word "narrativity" is a linguistic parvenu, the Anglo-Saxon version of a term which, in one form or another, has only recently made it into various European languages. To be sure, this newcomer is derived from a word with an illustrious pedigree in classical rhetoric: the word narratio (cognate with the older Latin word for "knowing," gnarus), designating that part of a discourse in which the facts of the matter under discussion were stated. The recent spawning of the term "narrativity" and its relatives can be ascribed to a number of related causes, but above all to the structuralists' recognition of the existence of "narrative" as a specific representational form which, while manifested in different forms and cultures, constitutes a distinct object of knowledge (Barthes 1981 [1966]: 7). The subsequent development of "narratology" as a branch of literary studies has led to a number of important insights into the nature and function of that cross-cultural phenomenon. In recent years, moreover, as a spate of publications illustrates (see, e.g., Ehlich 1980; Ankersmit, Doeser, and Kibedi-Varga 1990; Barry 1990; Nash 1990), there has also been an increasing recogni-

Technology and mythic narrative: The matrix as technological hero‐quest

Abstract: This inquiry analyzes the narrative structure of the technological hero‐quest myth contained within the recent film, The Matrix, and explicates the implications of this message upon the audience Joseph Campbell's hero‐quest, modified with insights from narrative theory, is applied to the The Matrix in order to highlight its appeal to modern audiences Utilizing insights from the philosophy of Kant and Schopenhauer, Campbell's monomyth is altered to account for the existential and ontological separation the technological hero experiences This film is shown to be a powerful myth for alienated and disempowered individuals in technologically driven communities, with potentially troubling consequences due to its theme of “solitary enlightenment” Auditors are offered the chance to identify with a hero who is enlightened, but ontologically separate, and thus warranted in destroying the community in order to “save” it