Narratology Beyond the Human

Narratology Beyond the Human
Author: David Herman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2018
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 019085040X

To what extent, and in what manner, do storytelling practices accommodate nonhuman subjects and their modalities of experience, and how can contemporary narrative study shed light on interspecies interactions and entanglements? In Narratology beyond the Human, David Herman addresses these questions through a cross-disciplinary approach to post-Darwinian narratives concerned with animals and human-animal relationships. Herman considers the enabling and constraining effects of different narrative media, examining a range of fictional and nonfictional texts disseminated in print, comics and graphic novels, and film. In focusing on techniques such as the use of animal narrators, alternation between human and nonhuman perspectives, the embedding of stories within stories, and others, the book explores how specific strategies for portraying nonhuman agents both emerge from and contribute to broader attitudes toward animal life. Herman argues that existing frameworks for narrative inquiry must be modified to take into account how stories are interwoven with cultural ontologies, or understandings of what sorts of beings populate the world and how they relate to humans. Showing how questions of narrative bear on ideas of species difference and assumptions about animal minds, Narratology beyond the Human underscores our inextricable interconnectedness with other forms of creatural life and suggests that stories can be used to resituate imaginaries of human action in a more-than-human world.

Letting Stories Breathe

Letting Stories Breathe
Author: Arthur W. Frank
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2010-11-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226260143

Stories accompany us through life from birth to death. But they do not merely entertain, inform, or distress us—they show us what counts as right or wrong and teach us who we are and who we can imagine being. Stories connect people, but they can also disconnect, creating boundaries between people and justifying violence. In Letting Stories Breathe, Arthur W. Frank grapples with this fundamental aspect of our lives, offering both a theory of how stories shape us and a useful method for analyzing them. Along the way he also tells stories: from folktales to research interviews to remembrances. Frank’s unique approach uses literary concepts to ask social scientific questions: how do stories make life good and when do they endanger it? Going beyond theory, he presents a thorough introduction to dialogical narrative analysis, analyzing modes of interpretation, providing specific questions to start analysis, and describing different forms analysis can take. Building on his renowned work exploring the relationship between narrative and illness, Letting Stories Breathe expands Frank’s horizons further, offering a compelling perspective on how stories affect human lives.

Animal Narratology

Animal Narratology
Author: Joela Jacobs
Publisher: MDPI
Total Pages: 454
Release: 2020-12-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3039283480

Animal Narratology interrogates what it means to narrate, to speak—speak for, on behalf of—and to voice, or represent life beyond the human, which is in itself as different as insects, bears, and dogs are from each other, and yet more, as individual as a single mouse, horse, or puma. The varied contributions to this interdisciplinary Special Issue highlight assumptions about the human perception of, attitude toward, and responsibility for the animals that are read and written about, thus demonstrating that just as “the animal” does not exist, neither does “the human”. In their zoopoetic focus, the analyses are aware that animal narratology ultimately always contains an approximation of an animal perspective in human terms and terminology, yet they make clear that what matters is how the animal is approximated and that there is an effort to approach and encounter the non-human in the first place. Many of the analyses come to the conclusion that literary animals give readers the opportunity to expand their own points of view both on themselves and others by adopting another’s perspective to the degree that such an endeavor is possible. Ultimately, the contributions call for a recognition of the many spaces, moments, and modes in which human lives are entangled with those of animals—one of which is located within the creative bounds of storytelling.

Narratology

Narratology
Author: Genevieve Liveley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2019-03-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0192524437

This volume explores the extraordinary contribution that classical poetics has made to twentieth and twenty-first century theories of narrative, aiming not to argue that modern narratologies simply present 'old wine in new wineskins', but rather to identify the diachronic affinities shared between ancient and modern stories about storytelling. By recognizing that modern narratologists bring a particular expertise to bear upon ancient literary theory, and by interrogating ancient and modern narratologies through the mutually imbricating dynamics of their reception, it seeks to arrive at a better understanding of both. Each chapter selects a key moment in the history of narratology on which to focus, providing an overview of significant phases before offering detailed analyses of core theories and texts, from the Russian formalists and Chicago school neo-Aristotelians, through the prestructuralists, structuralists, and poststructuralists, up to the latest unnatural and antimimetic narratologists. The reception history that thus unfolds offers some remarkable plot twists and yields valuable insights into the interpretation of some notoriously difficult ancient works. Plato in the Republic is unmasked as an unreliable narrator and theorist, while Aristotle's On Poets reveals a rare glimpse of the philosopher putting narrative theory into practice in the role of storyteller. Horace's Ars Poetica and the works of ancient scholia by critics and commentators evince a rhetorically conceived poetics and sophisticated reader-response-based narratology which indicate a keen interest in audience affect and cognition - anticipating the cognitive turn in narratology's most recent postclassical phase.

The Wounded Storyteller

The Wounded Storyteller
Author: Arthur W. Frank
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2013-10-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 022606736X

Updated second edition: “A bold and imaginative book which moves our thinking about narratives of illness in new directions.” —Sociology of Heath and Illness Since it was first published in 1995, The Wounded Storyteller has occupied a unique place in the body of work on illness. A collective portrait of a so-called “remission society” of those who suffer from illness or disability, as well as a cogent analysis of their stories within a larger framework of narrative theory, Arthur W. Frank’s book has reached a large and diverse readership including the ill, medical professionals, and scholars of literary theory. Drawing on the work of such authors as Oliver Sacks, Anatole Broyard, Norman Cousins, and Audre Lorde, as well as from people he met during the years he spent among different illness groups, Frank recounts a stirring collection of illness stories, ranging from the well-known—Gilda Radner’s battle with ovarian cancer—to the private testimonials of people with cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, and disabilities. Their stories are more than accounts of personal suffering: They abound with moral choices and point to a social ethic. In this new edition Frank adds a preface describing the personal and cultural times when the first edition was written. His new afterword extends the book’s argument significantly, discussing storytelling and experience, other modes of illness narration, and a version of hope that is both realistic and aspirational. Reflecting on his own life during the creation of the first edition and the conclusions of the book itself, he reminds us of the power of storytelling as way to understand our own suffering. “Arthur W. Frank’s second edition of The Wounded Storyteller provides instructions for use of this now-classic text in the study of illness narratives.” —Rita Charon, author of Narrative Medicine “Frank sees the value of illness narratives not so much in solving clinical conundrums as in addressing the question of how to live a good life.” —Christianity Today

Narratology in the Age of Cross-disciplinary Narrative Research

Narratology in the Age of Cross-disciplinary Narrative Research
Author: Sandra Heinen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2009
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110222426

Narrative Research has developed into an international and interdisciplinary field. This volume collects fifteen essays which look at narrative and narrativity from various perspectives, including literary studies and hermeneutics, cognitive theory and creativity research, metaphor studies, and film theory and intermediality

Narratology beyond Literary Criticism

Narratology beyond Literary Criticism
Author: Jan Christoph Meister
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2008-08-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110201844

This anthology presents the results of the Second International Colloquium of the Narratology Research Group (Hamburg University). It engages in the exploration of approaches that broaden Narratology's realm. The contributions illustrate the transcendence of traditional models common to Narratology. They also reflect on the relevance of such a 'going beyond' as seen in more general terms: What interrelation can be observed between re-definition of object domain and re-definition of method? What potential interfaces with other methods and disciplines does the proposed innovation offer? Finally, what are the repercussions of the proposed innovation in terms of Narratology's self-definition? The innovative volume facilitates the inter-methodological debate between Narratology and other disciplines, enabling the conceptualization of a Narratology beyond traditional Literary Criticism.

The Palgrave Handbook of Animals and Literature

The Palgrave Handbook of Animals and Literature
Author: Susan McHugh
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 631
Release: 2020-11-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3030397734

This volume is the first comprehensive guide to current research on animals, animality, and human-animal relations in literature. To reflect the history of literary animal studies to date, its primary focus is literary prose and poetry in English, while also accommodating emergent discussions of the full range of media and contexts with which literary studies engages, especially film and critical theory. User-friendly language, references, even suggestions for further readings are included to help newcomers to the field understand how it has taken shape primarily through recent decades. To further aid teachers, sections are organized by conventions of periodization, and chapters address a range of canonical and popular texts. Bookended by sections devoted to the field’s conceptual foundations and new directions, the volume is designed to set an agenda for literary animal studies for decades to come.

Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind

Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind
Author: David Herman
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 443
Release: 2017-02-24
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0262533774

An transdisciplinary exploration of narrative not just as a target for interpretation but also as a means for making sense of experience itself. With Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind, David Herman proposes a cross-fertilization between the study of narrative and research on intelligent behavior. This cross-fertilization goes beyond the simple importing of ideas from the sciences of mind into scholarship on narrative and instead aims for convergence between work in narrative studies and research in the cognitive sciences. The book as a whole centers on two questions: How do people make sense of stories? And: How do people use stories to make sense of the world? Examining narratives from different periods and across multiple media and genres, Herman shows how traditions of narrative research can help shape ways of formulating and addressing questions about intelligent activity, and vice versa. Using case studies that range from Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to sequences from The Incredible Hulk comics to narratives told in everyday interaction, Herman considers storytelling both as a target for interpretation and as a resource for making sense of experience itself. In doing so, he puts ideas from narrative scholarship into dialogue with such fields as psycholinguistics, philosophy of mind, and cognitive, social, and ecological psychology. After exploring ways in which interpreters of stories can use textual cues to build narrative worlds, or storyworlds, Herman investigates how this process of narrative worldmaking in turn supports efforts to understand—and engage with—the conduct of persons, among other aspects of lived experience.