This book provides not only a method for the analysis of salient transmedial strategies of narrative representation in contemporary films, comics, and video games but also a theoretical frame within which medium-specific approaches from literary and film narratology, from comics studies and game studies, and from various other strands of media and cultural studies may be applied to further our understanding of narratives across media.
This book provides not only a method for the analysis of salient transmedial strategies of narrative representation in contemporary films, comics, and video games but also a theoretical frame within which medium-specific approaches from literary and film narratology, from comics studies and game studies, and from various other strands of media and cultural studies may be applied to further our understanding of narratives across media.
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This book provides not only a method for the analysis of salient transmedial strategies of narrative representation in contemporary films, comics, and video games but also a theoretical frame within which medium-specific approaches from literary and film narratology, from comics studies and game studies, and from various other strands of media and cultural studies may be applied to further our understanding of narratives across media.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780803288379 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nebraska |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2016 |
| Series: | Frontiers of Narrative |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 552 |
| File size: | 18 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
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Transmedial Narratology and Contemporary Media Culture
By Jan-Noël Thon
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Board of Regents of the University of NebraskaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8032-8837-9
CHAPTER 1
Toward a Transmedial Narratology
From Narrative Theory to a Method of Analysis
Despite the fact that narrative accounts of complex historical developments are problematic in both theory and practice, the story of narratology has been told and retold countless of times in the past five decades. Hence, it seems neither necessary nor desirable to attempt another detailed retelling of the events that led from the publication of the eighth issue of Communications in 1966 and the first works of classical narratology within French structuralism to the current situation of various postclassical "new narratologies" differing widely in epistemological and methodological orientation. In order to situate the aims and scope of my approach within the narratological tradition, however, it might still be helpful to discuss some of the more prominent strands of recent research. In a somewhat eclectic account of current postclassical narratology, Ansgar Nünning distinguishes eight kinds of approaches: "contextualist, thematic, and ideological approaches/applications of narratology in literary studies"; "feminist narratology"; "transgeneric and transmedial applications and elaborations of narratology"; "pragmatic and rhetoric kinds of narratology"; "cognitive and reception theory-oriented kinds of ('meta-')narratology"; "postmodern and poststructuralist deconstructions of (classical) narratology"; "linguistic approaches/contributions to narratology"; "philosophical narrative theories"; and "other interdisciplinary narrative theories" (see A. Nünning, "Narratology" 249–251).
It is clearly beyond the scope of this chapter to examine all of the items on Nünning's list, but I would still like to single out the three approaches that, according to Jan Christoph Meister, "have turned out to be the dominant methodological paradigms of contemporary narratology" ("Narratology" 340). First, contextualist narratology "relates the phenomena encountered in narrative to specific cultural, historical, thematic, and ideological contexts" (Meister, "Narratology" 340) (and, accordingly, complies with Nünning's category of "contextualist, thematic, and ideological approaches/applications of narratology in literary studies"). Second, cognitive narratology "focuses on the human intellectual and emotional processing of narrative" (Meister, "Narratology" 340) (and, therefore, is closest to Nünning's category of "cognitive and reception theory-oriented kinds of ['meta-']narratology"). Third, transgeneric and intermedial approaches (that refer to Nünning's "transgeneric and transmedial applications and elaborations of narratology") include not only research on the transmedial dimensions of narrative but also a variety of intermedial and intramedial narratological approaches concerned with a single medium or genre such as poetry, drama, painting, music, film, comics, or video games.
It may be worth stressing at this point that the French structuralists of the 1960s and 1970s already considered narrative to be "international, transhistorical, transcultural," and fundamentally transmedial in that it can occur in an "almost infinite diversity of forms" (Barthes, "Introduction" 79). However, many of these early narratologists focused less on this diversity of narrative media (or the relation between their specific mediality and the transmedial properties of narrative representations) than on "a search for the laws which govern the narrated matter" (Bremond, "The Logic" 387), with these "laws" often being found on a level so abstract as to be of little value for the analysis of actual narrative representations. Overly formalistic and epistemologically naive as their works may appear from the perspective of contemporary narratology (as well as, and perhaps even more so, from the perspective of contemporary literary and media theory), the "high structuralists" (see Scholes 157) have not only introduced or refined a number of influential narratological concepts (such as "actant," "event," or the "story"/ "discourse" distinction), but their search for narrative universals also remains an important point of reference for contemporary narratological practice, including the project of a transmedial narratology.
Even beyond the structuralist heydays of the late 1960s and early 1970s, this kind of "story-oriented" narratology was continued by scholars such as Gerald Prince (A Grammar), Lubomír Dolezel (Heterocosmica; Narrative Modes), or Marie-Laure Ryan (Possible Worlds), but the publication of Gérard Genette's Narrative Discourse evidently marks an erosion of this emphasis on the "story" side of the "story"/"discourse" distinction, leading to the advent of a "discourse-oriented" narratology interested less in the structure of the story itself than in the way it was narrated. Genette remains one of the best-known narratologists to this day, and the terminology he developed in Narrative Discourse — and later refined in Narrative Discourse Revisited — can certainly be considered a "lingua franca" (A. Nünning and V. Nünning 6; Onega 276; Ryan and van Alphen 112) for the narratological analysis of literary texts. Still, following his repeated insistence on limiting the object domain of narratology to the "verbal transmission" (Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited 16, original emphasis)6 of stories would obviously pose a serious problem for every attempt at "doing transmedial narratology" (as well as for every intramedial narratological approach that does not restrict itself to exclusively or primarily verbal forms of narrative representation).
Fortunately, while Genette's brand of "low structuralism" proved to be extremely successful (see Scholes 157; as well as Cornils and Schernus), his attempts at limiting the object domain of narratology to literary and/or verbal narrative representations did not. Unfortunately, though, many "codifiers of narratology around 1980" (Darby 843), in aspiring to continue the project of a transmedial narratology begun by the "high structuralists," also adopted the project's primarily programmatic nature. Seymour Chatman, for example, remarks in the preface to Story and Discourse that "literary critics tend to think too exclusively of the verbal medium, even though they consume stories daily through films, comic strips, paintings, sculptures, dance movements, and music" (9). On closer inspection, however, Chatman's treatment of narrative structure in fiction and film is not only biased toward "the verbal medium" but also largely ignores narrative media beyond literary texts and films. Much in the same vein, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan's Narrative Fiction is exclusively concerned with literary texts, but still begins its introduction by emphasizing that "newspaper reports, history books, novels, films, comic strips, pantomime, dance, gossip, psychoanalytic sessions are only some of the narratives which permeate our lives" (1). Likewise, in Narratology, Mieke Bal reflects on her vision of a "visual narratology" all too briefly, claiming that "the analysis of visual images as narrative in and of themselves can do justice to an aspect of images and their effects that neither iconography nor other art historical practices can quite articulate" (162) without going beyond some very general remarks on what such a "visual narratology" — which she, moreover, envisions as being distinct from film narratology — would look like (see Bal, Narratology 66–75, 161–170). While this gap between program and implementation remains a persistent problem, one still needs to acknowledge the impressive diversification and sophistication of narratological practice from the 1980s onward — as well as the fact that the work of pioneering scholars such as Chatman, Rimmon-Kenan, and Bal made this diversification and sophistication possible to begin with.
The approach of the present book clearly belongs to Meister's third dominant paradigm, but it is also important to note that "postclassical narratology ... contains classical narratology as one of its 'moments'" (D. Herman, "Introduction: Narratologies" 2). Indeed, classical or, rather, neoclassical approaches still play an important role in contemporary narratology, as is demonstrated by a number of introductory textbooks by narratologists such as Matías Martínez and Michael Scheffel (Einführung), Jakob Lothe, H. Porter Abbott (The Cambridge Introduction), Monika Fludernik (An Introduction), Wolf Schmid (Narratology), or Silke Lahn and Jan Christoph Meister (all of which follow, at least to a certain extent, the project of codifying narratology begun and continued by scholars such as Seymour Chatman [Coming to Terms; Story], Mieke Bal [Narratology], and Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan [Narrative Fiction]). Similarly, my own approach is evidently influenced by some of the more postclassical approaches within contemporary narratology, but it still remains partially rooted in the (neo)classical tradition, whose heuristic potential for the analysis of narrative representations across media should not be carelessly dismissed.
So, what are the defining characteristics of a (neo)classical narratology? Since Tzvetan Todorov's coining of the term (see Todorov, Grammaire 10), a large number of narratologists such as Mieke Bal (Narratology), David Herman (Story Logic), Manfred Jahn (Narratology), Monika Fludernik (An Introduction), Ansgar and Vera Nünning, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan (Narrative Fiction 136–138), Marie-Laure Ryan (Possible Worlds), Wolf Schmid (Narratology), or Werner Wolf ("Das Problem") have considered narratology to be a theory of narrative. In addition to its status as a theory, however, narratology has always been concerned with the analysis of narrative(s). Since the examination of the formal and aesthetic structure of literary and "media" texts is usually also concerned with the development of conceptual frameworks for this examination, it will come as no surprise that narratology is likewise concerned with the "analysis of the techniques of narrative" (Bremond, "The Logic" 387) as well as with the provision of "instruments for the systematic description of all and only narratives" (Prince, "Narrative Analysis" 183), or even with the development of a full-fledged "method of analysis" (Genette, Narrative Discourse 23) that does not entirely coincide with the development of a theory of narrative. While narratology as a theory of narrative primarily aims at the universal characteristics of narrative in general or narrative media and narrative genres in particular, narratology as a method is concerned with the development of terms and concepts for the analysis of a wide variety of different strategies of narrative representation.
At least in the context of this book, then, I am neither exclusively interested in "doing theory" nor in attempting to resolve the "vexed issues" (Kindt and Müller, "Narrative Theory" 210) that writers of literary and media history have to face. My approach is obviously not limited to verbal or literary narrative but rather focuses on the narrative limitations and affordances that the specific multimodal configurations of contemporary films, comics, and video games provide. Yet I still emphasize the neoclassical task of developing a method for the analysis of transmedial strategies of narrative representation as they are realized across media. As I would, moreover, argue that one of the core tasks of the project of a transmedial narratology is to provide a theoretical frame within which various (more or less) medium-specific terms and concepts can be productively related to each other (see also Sachs-Hombach), a certain amount of terminological and conceptual reflection is necessary, but the book's main offering consists of a "toolbox" for the analysis of prototypical aspects of narrative across media which can be described as transmedial strategies of narrative representation. Not least because the kind of transmedial narratology proposed here is confronted with a dual challenge regarding the relation between its general concepts and their specific application, however, it may be worth elaborating on the relation between abstract theoretical or method(olog)ical considerations,10 on the one hand, and concrete analyses of narrative representations across media, on the other.
Let me begin, then, with a discussion of what Gérard Genette describes as "the paradox of every poetics, and doubtless of every other activity of knowledge as well: ... that there are no objects except particular ones and no science except of the general" (Narrative Discourse 23). Genette here refers to the problematic relation between the abstract nature of narratological concepts and what Marie-Laure Ryan calls "idiosyncrasies of individual texts" ("Introduction" 33), but Lubomír Dolezel's distinction between particularistic and universalistic poetics may help to state the problem more clearly: Narratological approaches that focus on developing a theory of narrative can be considered universalistic since they are "constituted by statements about, or definitions of, generic universals" (Dolezel, Occidental Poetics 17). Analyses of actual narrative representations can be considered particularistic in that they aim "to describe the individuality and diversity of particular structure" (Dolezel, Occidental Poetics 72). But the object domain of a book that focuses on the development of a method for the analysis of narrative representations would have to be located in between the universal and the particular. "Exemplification," Dolezel remarks, "is incomplete induction because it is based on a nonrepresentative sample of data; nevertheless, it preserves the role of induction as the bridge between empirical particulars and abstract universal" Occidental Poetics 25). Even though the method of analysis that is developed throughout the following chapters can be considered universal(istic) in the sense that its terms and concepts are meant to be applicable to a wide variety of narrative representations across media, the demonstration of its analytical power will necessarily remain particular(istic), with the actual analyses of transmedial strategies of narrative representation that are realized within the mediality of contemporary films, comics, and video games primarily fulfilling exemplifying functions.
In light of the epistemological and methodological problems that any attempt to describe transmedial strategies of narrative representation via the analysis of their medium-specific realization(s) is ultimately confronted with, however, it would evidently seem problematic to base the method to be developed exclusively on a necessarily small number of case studies. Hence, in order to expand this kind of "bottom-up" or inductive mode of reasoning by its "top-down" or deductive counterpart, I will systematically take into account previous narratological research, adhering — at least to a certain extent — to what Tom Kindt and Hans-Harald Müller describe as a criterion of continuity, which states that narratology "as a whole should take its initial orientation from the heuristically valuable concepts of twentieth-century narrative theory" ("Narrative Theory" 212). Particularly in light of the dual aim of providing both a method for the narratological analysis of transmedial strategies of narrative representation and a theoretical frame within which medium-specific narratological concepts can be integrated and productively interrelated, I will also attempt to adhere to Kindt and Müller's criterion of neutrality. Accordingly, this book's "conceptual apparatus has to be assembled in such a way that it remains compatible with a broad range of interpretive orientations" (Kindt and Müller, "Narrative Theory" 212). While my interest in transmedial strategies of narrative representation may make it necessary to shift the focus of Kindt and Müller's considerations to a certain extent (especially with regard to the inclusion of insights from cognitive theory, which I will discuss in greater detail below), a similar criterion of neutrality in fact forms the basis of how I would position my own approach with regard to contextualist and historicist approaches: although an examination of both the history of narrative representations across media and the cultural contexts in which their production and reception take place might contribute to a better understanding of their forms and functions, there are still far too many unanswered questions on a basic conceptual level to begin painting this kind of broader picture. Still, I hope that the following chapters will provide at least some useful conceptual foundations for future studies of narrative representation across media with a more decidedly contextualist and/or historicist focus.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Transmedial Narratology and Contemporary Media Culture by Jan-Noël Thon. Copyright © 2016 Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations,Acknowledgments,
Introduction,
1. Toward a Transmedial Narratology,
Part 1. Storyworlds across Media,
2. The Storyworld as a Transmedial Concept,
3. Narrative Representation across Media,
Part 2. Narrators across Media,
4. The Narrator as a Transmedial Concept,
5. Narratorial Representation across Media,
Part 3. Subjectivity across Media,
6. Subjectivity as a Transmedial Concept,
7. Subjective Representation across Media,
Conclusion,
Notes,
Works Cited,
Index,