Narrative Across Media

Edited by Marie-Laure Ryan

2004, Nebraska University Press

Narratology, the formal study of narrative, was conceived by its Structuralist founders as a project that transcends disciplines and media. Yet as supports of narrative meaning, media differ widely in their efficiency and expressive power-in what may be called their "affordances." Even when they seek to make themselves invisible, media are not hollow channels for the transmission of messages, but material supports of information whose materiality, precisely, matters for the type of meanings that can be encoded. Dividing its inquiry into five areas-- face-to-face narrative; still pictures; moving pictures; music, and digital media--, this book investigates how the intrinsic properties of the supporting medium shape the form of narrative and affect the narrative experience. Used as common denominator, the criterion of storytelling ability allows a better apprehension of the strengths and limitations in the representational power of individual media than single-medium investigations can do. Conversely, the study of the realization of narrative meaning in various media leads to a critical reexamination and expansion of the analytical vocabulary of narratology, a discipline which, despite its early interest in all forms of narrative, developed mainly as the study of literary texts.

Contents


xxxxxxxxx Marie-Laure Ryan: Introduction

xxxxxxxxx I: Face-to-face narrative
xxxxxxxxx Introduction
xxxxxxxxx 1. David Herman: Steps toward a Transmedial Narratology
xxxxxxxxx 2. Katharine Young: Edgework: Frame and Boundary in the Phenomenology of Narrative
xxxxxxxxx 3. Justine Cassell and David McNeill: Gesture and the Poetics of Prose

xxxxxxxxx II: Still Pictures
xxxxxxxxx Introduction
xxxxxxxxx 4. Wendy Steiner: Pictorial Narrativity
xxxxxxxxx 5. Jeanne Ewert: Art Spiegelman's Maus and the Graphic Narrative

xxxxxxxxx III: Moving Pictures
xxxxxxxxx Introduction
xxxxxxxxx 6. David Bordwell: NeoStructuralist Narratology and the Functions of Filmic Storytelling
xxxxxxxxx 7. Kamilla Elliott: Literary Film Adaptation and the Form/Content Dilemma
xxxxxxxxx 8. Cynthia Freeland: Ordinary Horror on Reality TV

xxxxxxxxx IV: Music
xxxxxxxxx Introduction
xxxxxxxxx 9. Emma Kafalenos: Overview of the field
xxxxxxxxx 10. Eero Tarasti: Music as a Narrative Art
xxxxxxxxx 11. Peter Rabinowitz: Music, Genre, and Narrative Theory

xxxxxxxxx V Digital Media
xxxxxxxxx Introduction
xxxxxxxxx 12. Marie-Laure Ryan: Will New Media Produce New Narratives ?
xxxxxxxxx 13. Espen Aarseth: Quest Games as Post-Narrative Discourse
xxxxxxxxx 14. Peter Lunenfeld: The Myths of Interactive Cinema

xxxxxxxxx Coda
xxxxxxxxx 15. Liv Hausken:Textual Theory and Blind Spots in Media Studies

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