Film Narratology

by Peter Verstraten, Stefan Van der Lecq (Translator)

Overview

Most modern studies of narrative tend to focus predominantly on literature with only some reference to film. In Film Narratology, Peter W.J. Verstraten makes film narratives his primary focus, while noting the unexplored and essentially different narrative effects that film can produce with mise-en-scène, cinematography, and editing.

Reworking the definitive theory of narration offeredby literary scholar Mieke Bal, Film Narratology examines cinematic techniques such as external and internal narration, visual and auditive focalization, the narrative force of sound, and the ambiguities caused by voice-overs and flashbacks. Verstraten illustrates these narrative principles with a broad range of examples drawn from avant-garde cinema, golden age Hollywood, blockbusters, and European art cinema. Insightful and comprehensive, Film Narratology will surely become the standard reference of cinematic narration for film students and scholars.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802095053
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	10/24/2009
Edition description:	Third edition
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Peter Verstraten is a lecturer in Literary Studies at the University of Leiden Stefan van der Lecq is an editor at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 3

1 Is Cinema Essentially Narrative? 12

2 Basic Principles of Narratology 31

3 The Narrative Impact of the Mise en Scène 49

4 The Narrative Impact of Cinematography 66

5 Story and Fabula Disconnected through Editing 78

6 The Visual Narrator and Visual Focalization 96

7 Tension between the Visual and Auditive Narrators 125

8 Sound as a Narrative Force 146

9 The Narrative Principles of Genres 171

10 Filmic Excess: When Style Drowns the Plot 188

Appendix: The Virgin Suicides as a Test Case 205

Notes 219

Bibliography 241

Illustration Credits 247

Index of Concepts 249

Index of Names and Titles 255

Editorial Reviews

'Verstraten's book provides an indispensable guide to the narratological analysis of films. Film Narratology is interdisciplinary in the best sense of the word, taking both narrative theory and film analysis seriously and in great detail. Concept-based, Verstraten's lucid dialogues between concepts and an enormous corpus of films, from Hollywood to avant-garde, are inspirational.'—Mieke Bal, Academy Professor of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science and author of Narratology

From the Publisher

'Verstraten's book provides an indispensable guide to the narratological analysis of films. Film Narratology is interdisciplinary in the best sense of the word, taking both narrative theory and film analysis seriously and in great detail. Concept-based, Verstraten's lucid dialogues between concepts and an enormous corpus of films, from Hollywood to avant-garde, are inspirational.'

Mieke Bal