Narrative Across MediaEdited by Marie-Laure Ryan2004, Nebraska University PressNarratology, 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.
Contentsxxxxxxxxx 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 Return |