Narrative Features Research Articles

Artistic Narrative Structure of Ihsan Abdel Quduos and D. H. Lawrence's Novels: A Stylistic Comparative Sketch

This paper explores the artistic structures, aesthetics, and thematics in the literary works of Ihsan Abd Al-Quduos (the Arab writer) and D. H. Lawrence (the English writer) in terms of the narrative style, language, dialogue, settings, and characters through a textual analysis in the light of the premises of the narrative aesthetics, comparative assumptions and aesthetic intertextualities. Comparatively, the paper sheds light on the aspects of artistic aesthetics of structure and style between the two writers, basically the treatment of women, clarifying their narrative experiences. Therefore, this paper adopts the descriptive and analytical critical theory to explore similarities and dissimilarities in the aesthetics, style, and language of both writers' selected texts. The results of this paper textually reveal both authors' awareness of the nature of the fictional discourse as linguistic creativity and special artistic composition. Also, both novelists show some similarities and differences in narrative content, style, structure and themes, each according to his realistic experience as a result of the relationship with the surrounding environment and the cultural background. So, the two writers are very careful with all their art and creativity to endow their novels with aesthetics of expression and their structural and semantic spaces. The paper explores such issues in their selected narratives, which include Ihsan's Sleepless, The Dead End, A Nose and three Eyes, and Don't Turn off the Sun. Lawrence's novels include Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, The Lost Girl, Aaron's Rod, and Lady Chatterley's Lover.

Telling More than you Should: Narrative, Narratology, and Character Narration

Preview this article: Telling More than you Should: Narrative, Narratology, and Character Narration, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ej/111/4/englishjournal31695-1.gif

The Silence and the Silence Breakers of the Irish Civil War, 1922–2022

The Silence and the Silence Breakers of the Irish Civil War, 1922–2022 Síobhra Aiken (bio) The original timeline proposed for the Decade of Commemorations (2012–22) omitted the latter half of the Irish Civil War. The June 2022 centenary of the burning of the Public Record Office during the battle of the Four Courts was considered as a possible "capstone to the decade of centenaries."1 Following public criticism, however, the chronology of the "decade" was extended until 2023 to cover the final months of the Civil War. But this initial reluctance is highly revealing in terms of official attitudes toward the period of civil conflict. It speaks to a long-established tendency to shy away from the realities of Irish-on-Irish violence and particularly the contentious events of June 1922 to May 1923. The idea that the destruction of centuries of historical documents could offer a symbolic ending to the commemorations also reflects the long-standing characterization of the Irish Civil War as an absence within the historical narrative: memoirs mysteriously end with the truce of July 1921; statements in the Bureau of Military History (BMH) stop suddenly before the Civil War; history textbooks were characterized for decades by "oblivion after 1922."2 This type of socially validated silence is often a feature of the commemoration of war, mimicking perhaps the liturgical practices of mourning.3 But silence takes on even greater political significance in post–civil war society, as calls for amnesty in the name of the common good often translate into "amnesia" or "commanded forgetting" [End Page 260] (to use Paul Ricœur's term).4 From as early as Roman times, orator and historian Titus Labienus professed that "forgetting" was "the best defence against civil war."5 As David Armitage outlines, this connection between civil war and "historical amnesia" intensified from the late eighteenth century, as distinctions were drawn between the "blighting and collapse of the human spirit" associated with civil war and the "revelation and self-realization" offered by revolution.6 This celebrated fight for freedom versus traumatic civil-war binary is arguably the defining feature of the commemorative narrative of Ireland's revolutionary period. For example, when speaking in 1942, the Capuchin friar Fr. Aloysius Travers promised not to dwell on the "sad days of civil war and bitter strife," calling instead on his audience to "try to forget what is painful—let us remember what is heartening and inspiring."7 As Anne Dolan argues in her study of the "troubled" memory of the Free State side, the Irish Civil War produced "a will to forget, a retreat to a type of silence that erased all but the victory."8 This article is not just concerned with the silence, however. Rather, this article draws attention to the many voices that pushed against it. For just as there were objections in 2016 to the omission of the latter half of the Irish Civil War in state commemorations, so too the codes of silence surrounding the events of 1922–23—and, indeed, the many "unacknowledged" sites of civil war which characterized the revolutionary period more broadly—have been repeatedly contested over the past century.9 Fr. Travers's call to "try to forget" (my [End Page 261] emphasis) epitomizes what Guy Beiner refers to as the "paradox of intentional forgetting," a paradox that "effectively" ensures that the event supposedly condemned to oblivion "will be remembered in an obscure form."10 As historian Jay Winter observes in his consideration of twentieth-century postwar silence, "agents of silencing," who are "intent on keeping the lid on certain topics or words," nearly always have to contend with "memory agents" "equally dedicated to blowing the lid off."11 My earlier research in Spiritual Wounds: Trauma, Testimony, and the Irish Civil War (2022) investigated the silence-breaking projects of veterans of the conflict.12 This article widens the time frame of analysis by mapping the publication of popular civil-war narratives, decade by decade, from the 1920s to the present day. Despite the persistent belief, most recently expressed by R. F. Foster, that "creative literature inspired by the Civil War … remains scanty,"13 the supposed silence surrounding...

How to Be a Moderate Optimist about Neuroscience in Film Theory and Other Places

Research in cognitive science and aesthetics is on the rise. The skeptical position called moderate pessimism grants that neuroscience might play a role in theorizing about the nature of film and other arts, but offers little help with thorny conceptual questions key to understanding the nature of the arts. Moderate optimists note that the scope of neuroscientific research in the arts cannot be resolved in advance. I evaluate the debate between these positions, introduce a diagnostic recognition framework for neuroscience of film and, drawing on research from the neurophysiology of attention, explore the role the framework can play in discussions of narrative understanding and character engagement at the movies. I conclude that moderate optimism is a more promising methodological fit to collaborative research in neuroscience of film.

Knife to the Heart

Upon its release in 1982, Chan Is Missing became the first Asian American narrative feature to gain national distribution, crossover audiences, and critical acclaim. Forty years later, Oliver Wang discusses the film’s landmark achievement with its writer and director Wayne Wang, whose career was launched by the film’s success. Yet despite the film’s significance within a nascent Asian American filmography, Wang has not achieved the same level of recognition as other American independent filmmakers of the era, such as Steven Soderbergh and Spike Lee, an oversight that the film’s 40th anniversary Blu-ray edition along with Wang’s other “Chinatown Chronicles” (Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart [1985] and Eat a Bowl of Tea [1989]) is a step towards rectifying.

Moral Disengagement Cues and Consequences for Victims in Entertainment Narratives: an Experimental Investigation

ABSTRACT The role of moral disengagement in evaluating narrative character behaviors has been a source of scholarly investigation for some time. Despite a theoretical interest in the process, little work has experimentally manipulated content features related to the mechanisms proposed by Bandura in his selective moral disengagement model. This paper presents the results of an experiment that manipulates the presence/absence of a victim of an immoral protagonist’s actions in an audio-visual narrative. We measure various narrative engagement variables including perspective-taking, approbation of behavior, and character liking. Thus, our study design tests content cues corresponding to Bandura’s selective moral disengagement hypotheses and links them to variables specified in Zillmann’s affective disposition theory. Findings indicate that perspective-taking with the immoral protagonist is enhanced when the victim is absent. Perspective-taking then has downstream effects on other narrative processing variables, such as character judgments, desires for specific story outcomes, and punitiveness toward similar real-world behaviors. The design of the current study thus provides a roadmap for future research, and we discuss the value of carefully manipulating narrative cues in order to encourage or discourage moral disengagement in viewers.

Characterizing macro- and micro-structures of narrative skills for Mandarin-speaking school-age children with specific language impairment

IntroductionLittle is known about the narrative skills of Mandarin-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI). This study was aimed to capture the features of narratives for school-age Mandarin-speaking children with SLI. MethodsOral narrative samples by 55 Mandarin-speaking children with SLI [higher grades, recruited from Grade 4–5, n = 26, Mage = 11.00 years, SD = 0.56; lower grades, recruited from Grade 1–3, n = 29, Mage = 8.05 years, SD = 0.89] were compared with typically developing (TD) children on macro- and micro-structures of narratives. ResultsThe results revealed that across grades, for macrostructure, children with SLI lagged behind TD children in narrative pattern scores. For microstructure, children with SLI were constrained in the total number of words, the total number of different words, and the mean length of utterance. They also used fewer serial verb constructions, clausal objects, and temporality conjunctions. They were less adequate in the three referential functions of introduction, maintenance, and switch. Furthermore, the results showed that older children demonstrated higher narrative pattern scores, longer MLU, and higher proportions of conjunctions and referential forms of switch. ConclusionsThese results suggest that both macro- and micro-structure measures in narratives are sensitive to linguistic difficulties for children with SLI and that some of these measures are sensitive to grade growth. The findings shed light on the assessment and developmental changes of school-age Mandarin-speaking children with SLI and TD children.

From Hawkins to Jenkins: interpreting violence in British-Atlantic piracy narratives

ABSTRACT Reports of extreme violence are a defining feature of British-Atlantic piracy narratives. These violent episodes illustrate human behavior beyond the boundaries of civil norms and as such allow for a fundamental interrogation of those boundaries. The transgressive violence of pirate figures makes them ideally suited to exploring major political and philosophical topics of the period; the story of piratical violence allows for dialogic formulations – claims and counterclaims – about national character, human nature, civil society, and the workings of empire in the Atlantic. While some British pirate narratives recount violence in order to assert nationalist, even jingoistic perspectives, others explore piratical violence as a way of satirizing mainstream British culture and imperialism as fundamentally predatory and piratical.

Biographies of the Kuravars in Tamil Novels

Although realist novels in Tamil are largely colossal (Panjum Pasiyum, Malarum Sarugum, Thaagam) there is very little room for the minority race and are included in some parts of the novel. After the year of Two thousand, translation novels (Marathi) about tribes such as Lakshman Keikwat's Uchalia, Lakshman Mane's Upara, and Chandabai Kale's Kulathi changed the course of Tamil novels. The unbridled ethnographic biographies presented by these novels set the stage for other marginalized ethnic groups to come out of fiction, as well as the expansive boundaries of the Dalit novels. It is to be welcomed that the trend of writing novels focusing on the biographies of the Tamil ‘Kuravargal’ has developed in the Tamil context. Their cultural movements, such as the beliefs, rituals, diets, cults, habitat, and occupational crises of ethnic minorities, have begun to feature in recent narratives. In particular, Pandiyakkannan's novels Salavan, Malaipparai and Nugathadi can be read as doco- fictions. This article summarizes the center, format, and commentary of the novels.

Retrieval-induced forgetting for autobiographical memories beyond recall rates: A developmental study.

We investigated whether selective discussion of autobiographical memory narratives would impact the quality of young people's recall of their nondiscussed memory narratives. Children (ages 8-9 years, n = 65) and adolescents (ages 13-15 years, n = 58) completed an adapted version of the retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) paradigm for self-generated positively and negatively valenced autobiographical memories. Overall, 54.5% of the sample were female and 63.4% were of European ethnicity (11.4% Pacific Peoples, 8.1% Middle Eastern/Latin American/African, 7.3% Māori, 7.3% Asian, 2.4% Other). We defined narrative qualities as narrative coherence (Reese et al., 2011) and episodic and nonepisodic information (Addis et al., 2008). In light of developmental findings in other domains of autobiographical memory research (e.g., Reese et al., 2011; Willoughby et al., 2012), we hypothesized that selective discussion would result in RIF for children's, but not adolescents', narrative coherence and episodic detail, and that RIF would not occur for nonepisodic details for either children or adolescents. Findings for narrative coherence and nonepisodic detail indicated support for our hypotheses. Findings for episodic detail were in partial support of our hypothesis; RIF for episodic detail was found for both children and adolescents. Our findings not only demonstrate the importance of investigating the wider effects of RIF but also uncovered developmental differences previously overlooked in the field. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

“I still remember when…”: narratives of child maltreatment by emerging adults

The present study examines autobiographical narratives of childhood memories in emerging adults, including child maltreatment experiences. To date, research is inconclusive in identifying the specific characteristics of narratives of child maltreatment. We tested whether narratives of child maltreatment contained fewer evaluative statements and more narrative immersion when compared to other emotional childhood narratives, in addition to narratives of a control group. We analyzed oral narratives of stressful, sad, angering, and happy events collected from a total of 171 college students at an English-speaking university located in Cairo (48% with a history of child maltreatment and 52% without). The hypothesis that narratives of emotional events by the maltreated group contained fewer evaluative statements was confirmed; more specifically, they contained fewer emotion words. However, groups did not differ in the degree of immersive storytelling. Our findings are essential for mental health professionals, researchers as well as legal workers to help further understand the consequences of child maltreatment. The generalizability of the findings is limited by the cultural and social specificity of the sample. Therefore, further research is needed to replicate this study in clinical samples in different cultures, conducting the research in the subjects’ first language. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/26904586.2022.2036285 .

О структуре нарративных сдвигов в переводе

The aim of the study is to examine cases of discrepancy between the narrative characteristics of the original and the translations (content, narrator’s status, focalization) using the material of multiple translations from Russian into French and from French into Russian, to determine the reasons for such narrative shifts and describe their internal structure. The scientific originality of the research lies in a multifaceted analysis of narrative shifts in the context of multiple translations. As a result, it has been shown that narrative shifts can be caused by various factors (polysemy of the original units forms, attitude towards isomorphism of perception, peculiarities of the translator’s strategy), that they can manifest themselves to a greater or lesser extent and be carried out through simple transformations (explanations, anaphoric substitutions, etc.).

Scriptwriting for Interactive Crime Films

In recent years, the increasing number of interactive films being released, has highlighted the need for further development of methods and criteria that can guide the earlier stages of development, such as the scriptwriting process. Following the framework of interactive storytelling as a spectrum, it is acknowledged that writing a script for an interactive narrative that involves branching path options for navigating through the story, or multiple endings, is becoming more common and presents its own challenges. In this context, this paper examines established criteria used for assessing narrative quality and examines currently available software for interactive scriptwriting, identifying their affordances and limitations. Accordingly, we present Scapegoat, a short interactive crime drama, based on the model of British homicide investigations, and with the objective to investigate in practice the application of the criteria for narrative quality, together with the processes and elements of scriptwriting that can lead to a strong engaging story. We propose an approach that can efficiently incorporate crucial information of the interaction design, it can be effectively communicated to the crew and cast and used throughout the production lifecycle of the film. We highlight the crucial role of the on-set script supervisor for ensuring the interaction design is not compromised, and continuity is retained. We also discuss recommendations for further developments, including the importance of engaging the crew and cast early in the development process, together with future work into the requirements of interactive commissioners for television and film, and the need for standarisation in the industry.

Technology, Audio-visual Adaptation and Cultural Re-education of Opera

Considering the various uses that cinema has made of opera, this paper focusses on the new exhibitive and distributive mediums of musical theatre on the big screen today. This ranges from live broadcasts to the use of the screen in contemporary opera stagings. The paper raises several challenges, but particularly analyses the common market shared between opera and the audio-visual industry, from the perspective of the opera business in theatres. After defining the technological and commercial features that transform these broadcasts into sustainable film products, the focus is on ascertaining the audio-visual properties that establish opera simulcasts as a new media event in sociological terms.&#x0D; Once the technological perspective has been explored, the paper goes on to an aesthetic analysis of the audio-visual formats offered by combining opera and cinema. This analysis also offers an explanation of some of the sociological behaviours adopted by people attending films in theatres. Determining the characteristic narrative quality of opera enjoyed by audiences can facilitate a new exploration in the film industry of the future relations between these traditional art forms.

Christ, Shepherd of the Nations: The Nations as Narrative Character and Audience in John's Apocalypse by Jon Morales

Christ, Shepherd of the Nations: The Nations as Narrative Character and Audience in John's Apocalypse by Jon Morales

A podiatria clínica no planejamento de assistência de enfermagem direcionada ao paciente portador de diabetes mellitus

The aim was to emphasize the importance of clinical podiatry in planning nursing care for patients with diabetes mellitus. This is a bibliographic review, with a narrative character and a descriptive approach, with emphasis on the Systematization of Nursing Care (SAE), using articles published in indexed journals about patients with diabetes and clinical podiatry. The research was relevant to contribute to specific care for patients with diabetes mellitus at risk and patients with injuries resulting from foot complications. It is concluded that the SAE focused on the feet of patients with diabetes mellitus becomes significant to avoid injuries and, consequently, irreversible complications such as amputations. Clinical podiatry is a modality of treatment and specific care for the nursing staff that aims to develop care planning aimed at patients with diabetes mellitus.

Познание «чужого» в рассказе Х. Мантел «Curved is the Line of Beauty»

The article is dedicated to the analyses of the story «Curved is the Line of Beauty» by H. Mantel. The article deals with both the dichotomy of "own - alien" and the problems of post-colonial British literature. In the story, the author conveys a child's perception of people; H. Mantel breaks down stereotypical perceptions of dark-skinned people by processing the image of the dark-skinned person through the naive and creative perception of the child. We can better experience this childlike perception through the narrative's feature of the integration of the author and the narrator, so that the reader receives information from the 'primary source'. At the same time, despite the fact that the child's consciousness is not burdened with negative thoughts towards black people, the 'alien' is never able to become 'own' for the protagonist.

Twenty-First-Century Prisoners of the Caucasus: Scapegoats and Sacrificial Lambs in Aleksei Uchitel's Captive

Abstract: This article examines the "Prisoner of the Caucasus" story as it has evolved over the past two centuries, culminating in a discussion of Aleksei Uchitel's 2008 film Captive ( Plennyi ). As part of its analysis it will use the concept of "scapegoating" in modern war literature as described by David A. Buchanan in Going Scapegoat: Post-9/11 War Literature, Language and Culture . According to Buchanan, scapegoating characters in war narratives is a way for people to simultaneously create a shared identity through the language of colonial conquest while shedding themselves of their shared guilt for wars of questionable moral purpose. This article argues that in this long-running "Prisoner of the Caucasus" narrative, both the Circassian/Chechen character who dies, and the Russian haunted by that death, serve as scapegoats for the guilt of a Russian public anxious to disavow itself of culpability in Russia's wars of colonial expansion.

Two-world Nature of Sibel Atasoy&amp;apos;s Fantasy

Modern Turkish mass literature is extremely diverse. Fiction has taken a special place among the popular genres in 2000. Fiction, in turn, is largely defined by the genre of fantasy, which has become a mainstream one. Genre forms classification of Turkish fantasy is still in its formative stages. However, three sub-genres of fantasy are clearly present in Turkish literature. These are sword and sorcery fantasy, urban fantasy and dark fantasy. Each of these genres blends two worlds - the real one and the magic one - mixing two together and splitting the timeline of the work, causing the reader to doubt the reality of the events. In the sword and sorcery fantasy, the magical events appear mostly in the background of the Middle Ages, whereas in the urban and dark fantasy, modern times become the main setting, making it more multilayered and colourful. In Sibel Atasoy&amp;apos;s novel The Grinning Red Moon (2000), the two-world nature of fantasy literature can be observed at all levels of a fiction text, presented as a monologue of the protagonist. Her monologue narration often disrupts time and space layers, aiming to better represent the character of a woman narrator who was also split into two. The protagonist&amp;apos;s narrative clearly shows how her past and present are intertwined, how they become equal, and how the past finally replaces the present. The past and the present protagonists are two very distinct people in terms of psychology, trying to find contact with each other

The Free Individual in a Tale of Democracy: Hegemony and Dystopia in Visual Narratives

This study examines the power relations of the characters in dystopian-themed visual culture narratives. The study is based on the reasons that lead to the construction of the concept of hegemony, how a hegemonic system is processed in the dystopian narrative, and the effect of this system on the social norms among the characters. This study examines both how social norms enable the functioning of the hegemony system and how the characters are separated among themselves according to age, gender, power, and race differences. The study examines the young-adolescent TV series The Society (2019) in connection with the concept of hegemony. The main argument of this essay is the attempt made to theoretically contextualize and systematically analyze a contemporary TV series through a combination of political science, speculative fiction, and film studies to explore the concept of hegemony. The hegemony in the narrative is based on the existence of the sovereign power and is built through all the oppression and ideological devices held by this power.