Reviews:
“Grishakova . . . and
Poulaki . . . bring forward prominent scholars from around the world who offer
vision and new theoretical frameworks regarding narrative studies. Contributors
investigate narrative complexity from varying interdisciplinary viewpoints, including
sense-making via mind-body engagement and social/cultural environments via
technology and media. . . . The examinations of narratives in multiple emerging
media contexts alone make this a worthy read.”
—K. L. Majocha, Choice
“Perhaps it is obvious
that narrative—a communicative act stretching across potentially every aspect
of human experience—is a complex process, but the discussion of the variable
nature of that complexity as demonstrated in this volume is worth considering
at length.”
—Daniel Peretti, Journal of Folklore Research
“Encyclopedic in
scope, Narrative Complexity surveys a dazzling variety of genres, media
forms, and theories about complexity, including artistic, literary, and
scientific examples. Contributions by many eminent narratologists make this an
invaluable work and essential reading for anyone interested in how the
conjunction of narrative and complexity can be configured and interrogated.
Kudos to the editors for introducing and assembling this remarkable
collection.”
—N. Katherine Hayles, author of Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive
Nonconscious
“Challenging the
distinction between ‘simplicity’ as primary and primordial and ‘complexity’ as
secondary and derived from simplicity, these far-ranging studies make the case
that human cultures and minds are inherently complex. They are indeterminate
and uncertain. This holds particularly true for narrative discourse, which is
at the heart of culture and mind. Understanding homo narrans means
understanding the human being in the world in its most complex forms. As a
consequence, narrative studies have to refine their intellectual
instruments—conceptually, empirically, hermeneutically—in the ways impressively
explored in this volume.”
—Jens Brockmeier, professor of psychology at the American University of
Paris
“This volume opens a
new window on the emergence of narratology within the context of complexity
theory. In contrast to its phase of pluralization in the form of diverse models
and paradigms, narratology, by turning to complex phenomena such as
self-organization, nonlinearity, recursion, and nonhierarchical relations in
various media, is exploring new domains where the interactions between embodied
cognition and social and cultural embeddedness are redefining the contours of
narrative. Narrative Complexity bears witness to the repositioning of
the ‘conditions of possibility’ of narratology.”
—John Pier, University of Tours and CRAL (CNRS), Paris
Description:
The
variety in contemporary philosophical and aesthetic thinking as well as in
scientific and experimental research on complexity has not yet been fully
adopted by narratology. By integrating cutting-edge approaches, this volume
takes a step toward filling this gap and establishing interdisciplinary
narrative research on complexity.
Narrative Complexity provides a framework
for a more complex and nuanced study of narrative and explores the experience
of narrative complexity in terms of cognitive processing, affect, and mind and
body engagement. Bringing together leading international scholars from a range
of disciplines, this volume combines analytical effort and conceptual insight
in order to relate more effectively our theories of narrative representation
and complexities of intelligent behavior.
This
collection engages important questions on how narrative complexity functions as
an agent of cultural evolution, how our understanding of narrative complexity
can be extended in light of new research in the social sciences and humanities,
how interactive media produce new types of narrative complexity, and how the
role of embodiment as a factor of narrative complexity acquires prominence in
cognitive science and media studies. The contributors explore narrative
complexity transmitted through various semiotic channels, embedded in multiple
contexts, and experienced across different media, including film, comics,
music, interactive apps, audiowalks, and ambient literature.
Contents:
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction:
Narrative Complexity (Marina Grishakova and Maria Poulaki)
Part 1. Narrative Complexity
and Media
Chapter 1. Narrative as/and Complex
System/s (Marie-Laure Ryan)
Chapter 2. Caution, Simulation Ahead:
Complexity and Digital Narrativity (David Ciccoricco and David Large)
Chapter 3. The Wave-Crest: Narrative
Complexity and Locative Narrative (Emma Whittaker)
Chapter 4. Complexity and the Userly
Text (Noam Knoller)
Chapter 5. The Complexity of
Informative Autobiographies (Ulrik Ekman)
Part 2. Cognition and
Narrative Comprehension
Chapter 6. Sources of Complexity in
Narrative Comprehension across Media (Joseph P. Magliano, Karyn Higgs, and
James Clinton)
Chapter 7. Structural Complexity in
Visual Narratives: Theory, Brains, and Cross-Cultural Diversity (Neil Cohn)
Chapter 8. Simplicity, Complexity, and
Narration in Popular Movies (James E. Cutting)
Chapter 9. Heteronomy of Narrative:
Language Complexity and Computer Simplicity (Hamid R. Ekbia)
Part 3. Experience,
Subjectivity, and Embodied Complexity
Chapter 10. Narrative Here-Now (Mieke
Bal)
Chapter 11. Body Forth in Narrative (Ellen
J. Esrock)
Chapter 12. Between Distancing and
Immersion: The Body in Complex Narrative (Maria Poulaki)
Chapter 13. Intersubjectivity,
Idiosyncrasy, and Narrative Deixis: A Neurocinematic Approach (Pia Tikka and
Mauri Kaipainen)
Chapter 14. Jazz as Narrative:
Narrating Cognitive Processes Involved in Jazz Improvisation (Martin E.
Rosenberg)
Part 4. Narrative Complexity
and Cultural Evolution
Chapter 15. The Predictive Mind,
Attention, and Cultural Evolution: A New Perspective on Narrative Dynamics (Marina
Grishakova)
Chapter 16. Necessary Fictions:
Supernormal Cues, Complex Cognition, and the Nature of Fictional Narrative (James
Carney)
Chapter 17. In Hindsight: Complexity,
Contingency, and Narrative Mapping (José Angel García Landa)
Contributors
Index
About
the Editors:
Marina Grishakova is a professor of
comparative literature at the University of Tartu in Estonia. She is the author
of The Models of Space, Time and Vision in V. Nabokov’s Fiction: Narrative
Strategies and Cultural Frames and the coeditor of Intermediality and
Storytelling.
Maria Poulaki is a lecturer in film and
digital media arts at the University of Surrey and the coeditor of Compact
Cinematics: The Moving Image in the Age of Bit-Sized Media.
Target
Audience:
People
interested in Literature, discourse analysis and narratology.