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.

"Put the Book Down and Slowly Walk Away": Irony and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest

Abstract: avid Foster Wallace is constantly concerned with irony. It is at the heart of Infinite Jest and constitutes a major theme of his essays and interviews. In his analysis of the trope, Wallace has centered on two domains in which irony manifests itself, popular culture (“E Unibus Pluram”) and literary production (McCaffery interview). Irony seems to him “a hatred that winks and nudges you and pretends it’s just kidding,” that has “gone from liberating to enslaving” (McCaffery 147). Wallace takes a keen interest in the problem of “literary ethics” (“A Supposedly Fun Thing” 287), in the ways that one can dwell in an “[i]rony-free zone” to speak of “real stuff” (Infinite Jest 369, 592) and maximally to engage the reader. A literary attempt to reinstall this mutual understanding between reader and narrator can be found in “Octet,” in which “completely naked helpless pathetic sincerity” (131) is asked of both narrator and reader. But even in Up, Simba! a commentary on media and politics in the McCain 2000 election campaign, this interest leaps to the eye. In this article, I address the particularities of the use of irony in Infinite Jest, which require examining closely the contents of the novel: How do the characters present and use irony? A thorough examination of James O. Incandenza’s works, especially his lethal movie “Infinite Jest,” is crucial. Second, we must enter the theoretical debate about irony and evaluate the structure of the novel with regard to its (non)ethical treatment of the reader. My interest lies mainly in

Paradigm Shift in Plot Models: An Outline of the History of Narratology

Abstract: The short history of narratology (i.e., narrative theory inspired by classical structuralism) has proven to be long enough for the discipline to undergo some substantial paradigmatic changes. Furthermore, although on the surface narratology manifests a relatively coherent and almost monolithic theoretical project, it includes in fact diverse methods and orientations. The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of a paradigm change in narratological models of plot and to describe it in terms of shifts within the range of conceptualizations available in the formalist-structuralist tradition. More specifically, this paradigmatic change consists of a shift from structural descriptions of action-structures in classical structuralism to semantic descriptions of narrative modalities in recent developments in narratology. Yet this shift should not be described as a punctual transition but as a dialectical development, leading from the earlier ideology of classical structuralism to the gradual domination of semantics in narrative theory. To delineate this paradigm shift, a twofold argument will be put forward: (1) In theory, the concept of plot appears in classical structuralism as part of the attempt to describe the action-scheme in narrative texts. In practice, however, structuralist plot models address a more comprehensive object and much broader questions. The gap between "official" pronouncements of structuralist poetics, made in manifestolike pieces (Barthes 1966b; Genette 1982 [1964]), and implications

Conviction Narrative Theory and Understanding Decision-Making in Economics and Finance

Abstract: This chapter describes the radically uncertain context faced by money managers and how they cope by developing conviction narratives. It then generalizes these findings to introduce a wider theory of decision-making under radical uncertainty, termed Conviction Narrative Theory (CNT). CNT differs from standard approaches to decision-making in economics and behavioural psychology that are limited to theories of efficient and inefficient information processing in contexts where data is available to calculate future probabilities. In radical uncertainty, we cannot know which bits of information are useful. CNT explains the human capacity to cope despite this situation: actors organize their experience through narratives and use the emotions attaching to them to feel the conviction to act. In effect, CNT operationalizes Keynes’ (1936) formulation of animal spirits as a human solution to radical uncertainty; and it provides more plausible and empirically substantiated microfoundations on which to build understanding of aggregate economic outcomes, the development of monocultures, and financial market instability.

Strategic Empathizing: Techniques of Bounded, Ambassadorial, and Broadcast Narrative Empathy

Abstract: This essay in the field of rhetorical narratology theorizes three varieties of authors’ strategic empathizing, adding to the understanding of the relationship among idealized authorial audiences and actual, historic audiences made up of a variety of real readers. Keen suggests that authorial strategic empathizing can be discerned by studying techniques of bounded, ambassadorial, and broadcast narrative empathy in novels.