Abstract
Abstract The theoretical debate on the nature of narrative has been mainly concerned with literary narratives, whereas forms of non-literary and especially pictorial narrativity have been somewhat neglected. In this paper, however, I shall discuss narrativity specifically with regard to pictorial objects in order to clarify how pictorial storytelling may be based on the activation of mentally stored action and scene schemas. Approaches from cognitive psychology, such as the work of Schank, Roger C. & Robert P. Abelson. 1977. Scripts, plans, goals and understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; Mandler, Jean Matter. 1984. Stories, scripts, and scenes: Aspects of schema theory. London/Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; Schank, Roger C. 1995. Tell me a story: Narrative and intelligence. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, suggest that cognition crucially depends on the storage and retrieval of action scripts or schemata, that is, narrative structures, which may occur at various levels of abstraction. These schemas incorporate generalized knowledge about event sequences, such as the order in which specific events will take place; causal, enabling, or conventionalized relations between these events, and what kind of events occur in certain action sequences. There also are scene schemas that are characterized by spatial rather than temporal relations. Further kinds of schemas seem also to play a decisive role. Drawing upon considerations from schema and script theory, I will focus on some concrete examples of pictorial narration, more specifically depictions of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, where narrative schema structures become involved and, indeed, the comprehensibility of the pictures as such presuppose mental script representations.
Highlights
The theoretical debate on the nature of narrative has been mainly concerned with literary narratives, whereas forms of non-literary and especially pictorial narrativity have been somewhat neglected
I shall discuss narrativity with regard to pictorial objects in order to clarify how pictorial storytelling may be based on the activation of mentally stored action and scene schemas
IL: Northwestern University Press, suggest that cognition crucially depends on the storage and retrieval of action scripts or schemata, that is, narrative structures, which may occur at various levels of abstraction
Summary
As we have seen in the previous sections, schemata and their constituents as here outlined seem to play a crucial role for text and story comprehension, and understanding human behavior in general. Exercises of religious contemplation as here described would contribute to a more detailed comprehension and interpretation of paintings, onto which private mental visualizations were projected Still, this nuanced ability to interpret pictures was not necessarily the result of a higher education or of having read written tutorials, and became widespread and fostered through popular sermons performed by charismatic preachers. According to Baxandall, beholders in Renaissance Italy would have been very sensitive to and aware of subtle differences in the illustrations of biblical stories, and certainly so compared to viewers today (Baxandall 1972: 36–37) Instructive in this respect were, for example, Fra Roberto’s sermons, where he discerns between three general “mysteries,” or basic action constituents, of the Annunciation: (i) the Angelic Mission; (ii) the Angelic Salutation; and (iii) the Angelic Colloquy. As explicated by Fra Roberto, discern between these five partonomic segments of the Angelic Colloquy sequence
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