Fictional Narratives Research Articles

Leben erzählen: Stefan Zweigs biographisches Erzählen und sein Leben als Gegenstand biographischer Repräsentation

This essay examines the narratological and semantic implications of Stefan Zweig’s biographical narration, demonstrating how the biographical texts and the fictional narratives differ in the degree to which they represent the complexity of the narrated life. This applies in a similar way to biographical literature about Stefan Zweig, which appears in different genres and media in the late modern age. The unifying focus of this essay is the mediality of narration, which draws attention to the given media-aesthetic peculiarities in each case and in sum clarifies the biographical complexity that relates to the narration of life in modernity.

A Narrative Stylistic Analysis to Amitav Ghosh’s Fictional Narratives

Narrative Stylistics is the most recently established idea and area in contemporary stylistics. William Labov (1972), Fowler (1977, 1996) and Bakhtin (1986) were major contributions to contemporary stylistics and narratology. Without a doubt, the story has gained a bigger place in the minds of stylists, analysts, and critics. The social, historical, and cultural foundations of story stylistics are the most important, where narrative and discourse stylistics collide. It gave the best scope to study Amitav Ghosh's historical fiction in Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke with narrative and cognitive stylistics. This paper focused on the study of narrative stylistics and deictic shift theory, and how they were employed in these two novels that resulted in the cognitive effect on readers' minds.

Surrogacy and dystopian positionality: narrative reproduction between speculative fiction and chick lit

Abstract When it comes to Anglophone surrogate fictions, it seems that one reader’s dystopia is another writer’s chick lit: whereas widely received fictional narratives about surrogacy which are set in a future North America, such as The Handmaid’s Tale and The Farm, are mostly read as dystopian or speculative fiction, the small corpus of novels which negotiate commercial surrogacy in India (Origins of Love, The House of Hidden Mothers and A House for Happy Mothers) all contain chick-lit elements. As this constellation of genres might create the impression that exploitative forms of surrogacy do not exist yet, this article brings together postcolonial and ethnographic scholarship on surrogacy with research from gender and queer studies in order to explore the wider socio-political implications of these generic complexities. Arguing that more work is needed to conceptualise dystopian positionality, the article first shows that speculative and dystopian texts about surrogacy often invite Western-centric interpretations in which the dystopian element is mostly configured in temporal terms while aspects of space and positionality tend to be neglected or universalised. Further unfolding the generic complexities of surrogate fictions, the article then explores the extent to which the chick-lit mode in the texts on Indian surrogacy consolidates biocapitalist consumer market ideologies. In a last step, the article discusses the interconnections between generic conventions and hetero- and bionormative teleologies, and it reflects on the problems which might arise when attempts to deconstruct heteronormative assumptions about reproduction do not simultaneously also question the – often stratifying – implications of bionormativity.

"Giordano Bruno. Lights from the Pyre" (1966) by the Philosopher Slavi Boyanov – a Literary Version of the Manuscript "Protection of the Human Person" Confiscated by the State Security (1953)

The paper traces the migration of a philosopher in the literary field. The purpose of this text is to prove, through the method of mutual interpretation (parallel reading of works of fiction, documentary texts and historiographical narrative), that Slavi Bo-yanov's novel ‘Giordano Bruno’. is a literary compensation for his confiscated manu-script ‘Defense of the Human Person’ (1953), which was not published until 1997. The contribution of the study is that it illuminates another case of an intellectual's strained relationship with the authorities in power.

FROM SURRENDER STORIES TO PERSISTENCE STORIES: YOUNG GIRLS’ NARRATIVES OF AGENCY AND POWER IN CHILD–PARENT CONFLICTS

This paper examines the dynamics of agency and power as revealed in young girls’ fictional narratives about child–parent conflicts that are caused by incompatibility between the goals of children and parents in everyday family life. The data were collected from 26 girls aged 4 to 6 using the Story Magician’s Play Time method. Narrative analysis yielded five types: mediation and compromise stories, surrender stories, persistence stories, solidarity stories, and standoff stories. In the girls’ stories, agency and power were multifaceted and variable phenomena that were negotiated in a relational context in which the gender of the child and parent characters played an important role. Power relations tended to be narrated as more hierarchical and immutable in child–father conflicts, and more often as negotiated in child–mother conflicts. However, when narrated as deploying unyielding and tactical actions, the child characters were only able to exert power over the parent in girl–mother conflicts. Thus, some stories conveyed a clear, hierarchical generational order while others demonstrated children’s agentic power to reshape adult dominance in child–adult conflicts in diverse ways. The practical implications of the findings are also discussed.

Dialectics of impairment: historical anxieties in late-colonial Bengali fictional narratives on disability

ABSTRACT This article examines a body of early twentieth-century Bengali fiction foregrounding persons marked as disabled (including people experiencing physical disability, learning disability and chronic illness). A number of Bengali short stories and novels offer embodied narratives, which consider the human body as a productive site of contest between the colonial social order, the attempt to impose Western modernity and indigenous consciousness. An emergent sense of cultural agency can be found to be claimed by people, whose physical and mental states deviate from codes of ‘normalcy’. These works unearth social discrimination based on the binary of ‘fit’ and ‘unfit’ under the converging rules of native feudalism and foreign colonialism. The treatment of corporeality in Bengali texts of the period from the 1930s to the 1950s cannot be fully grasped by applying the disability theories of the Global North. Rather these texts conflate multiple forms of marginalization of subject bodies to explore several socio-historical cross-sections and address the question of identity formation. This article rereads selected fiction on disability by Manik Bandyopadhyay (1908–1956) and Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay (1898–1971).

Dolet, Rabelais, and Paré: literature and medicine beyond dissection

This article attends to the act of speaking after death as it is explored by Étienne Dolet, François Rabelais, and surgeon Ambroise Paré. Dolet addresses a poem to Rabelais in 1538 – the year of Rabelais’s public dissection in Lyon – imagining a dissected corpse that is mute, in contrast to a garrulous, ineffective anatomist. This poetic consideration of voice and authority informs a new reading of Epistemon's resurrection in Pantagruel, where the exemplary value of Epistemon's testimony is reconsidered in relation to the overlooked medical feat of this episode, Panurge's suturing of Epistemon's neck. The article ends with a case history by Paré in which he sutured a patient’s slit throat well enough for him to speak. Speaking with the dead is reconfigured from rhetorical flourish to medical fact, from poetry to fictional narrative to medical case history, allowing for a reconsideration of interdisciplinary method for early modern studies and beyond.

Exploring the Human Condition: A Methodological Literature Review of Fiction-Based Research

Fictional narratives are increasingly analyzed by scholars to improve our understanding of the ‘human condition’, because fiction gives access to the deeply personal experiences, perceptions, and struggles of individuals. This methodological literature review explores current fiction-based research practices in organization and management studies, identifies methodological shortcomings, and finds emerging methodological conventions. After searching for fiction-based research in 26 leading organization and management journals, I found 69 articles that used fictional narratives. My analysis demonstrates that fiction is increasingly used by scholars to make theoretical contributions to six research themes: organizational life, leadership and resistance, change, ethics, gender and race, and organizational analysis. Fictional narratives are treated both metaphorically and as representations of organizational reality. The article shows recurring shortcomings in the literature and formulates recommendations for future fiction-based research. Specifically, scholars are encouraged to justify their selection of fictional sources, use multiple fictional narratives, consider including other (qualitative) data, describe the data analysis procedure, and provide longer passages or direct access to present their (fictional) data. While this review focuses on organization and management studies, it aims to be of use to the broad range of scholars in the social sciences and humanities by showing recent developments in fiction-based research and by offering tools to experiment with this innovative method, so that fictional narratives might inspire their work and enrich their research.

“Like Home”: Gerrymandering the Physical Public Sphere in Female Journalist Narratives

AbstractThe cultural figure of the female journalist most clearly embodies the opportunities given to, and the anxieties caused by, the period’s working women. As writers, they fought for rhetorical space in the pages of newspapers and periodicals, and as women, they faced social pressure to avoid the male-dominated physical public sphere or move within it under specific conditions. Even the increasing number of female journalists at the turn of the century could not guarantee their place within the newsroom itself, let alone the world beyond its walls. Instead, their struggle to stake a claim in physical public spaces manifested in fiction and nonfiction narratives as a search for “home,” or a place of belonging. This article explores the exclusively white-woman fiction and nonfiction narratives by and about nonwhite and nonmainstream women through a human geography lens, arguing that their shared central issue is the social “gerrymandering” of women and other overlapping marginalized groups out of physical public spaces, as well as the efforts of women to “redistrict” the social spheres into a comfortable public place in which everyone could thrive.

Activity versus Descriptivity: A Stylometric Analysis of Two English Translations of Hongloumeng

This study examined the translation style of David Hawkes and the Yangs (Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang) in their English translations of Hongloumeng, a Chinese Great Classic, by considering the hybrid register nature of fiction. The activity index, a measure from quanti-tative linguistics that calculates the ratio of verb occurrences to the sum of verb and adjec-tive occurrences, was used to analyze the active-descriptive equilibrium patterns across the two Hongloumeng translations and the two sub-registers of fiction. Our analysis is based on a corpus that separates fictional narration and dialogues from the first 80 chapters of the two Hongloumeng translations. The study found that, overall, dialogues tend to be more active than narration and Hawkes’ translation was characterized by a greater level of activity com-pared to the Yangs’ version. Subsequent analysis revealed that Hawkes' translation dis-played a higher level of activity in fictional dialogues while demonstrating a more descrip-tive approach in fictional narration. The results suggest that Hawkes’ translation adheres more closely to the typical stylistic conventions of fiction writing in English. The stylistic differences between the two translations of Hongloumeng are believed to be a result of a combination of factors, including the translators’ language and cultural backgrounds and their choice of translation strategies and approaches, which may have contributed to the var-iations in the final translated products.

Representation in fiction books: Neurodivergent young people's perceptions of the benefits and potential harms

Representation in narrative fiction can be a powerful tool to shape perceptions and challenge stereotypes. For neurodivergent young people, opportunities to see their experiences reflected in the books they read could have powerful effects on their sense of belonging, self-acceptance, and self-understanding. For neurotypical readers, learning about the experiences of their neurodivergent peers through accurate representation in fiction books could help to promote understanding and reduce stigma. This article aims to provide detailed insights into neurodivergent young people's perceptions of the benefits and potential harms associated with the representation of neurodivergence in narrative fiction books (and other text types). Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 16 neurodivergent young people (14–17 years old) from two high schools in Scotland. Using an inductive data-driven thematic analysis process, benefits (supporting self-understanding and acceptance; facilitating positive emotional experiences; reducing stigma; and increasing peer understanding) and potential harms (reinforcing negative stereotypes; and changes in peers’ behaviour) were identified. Implications for education are discussed.

From Orientalism to Re-Orientalism: An Analysis of A Pakistani English Fictional Narrative

From Orientalism to Re-Orientalism: An Analysis of A Pakistani English Fictional Narrative

Fictional Narrative Development in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Fictional Narrative Development in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Writing and rewriting fictional narratives guided by Gianni Rodari’s creative proposals

Resumo Gianni Rodari apresenta propostas lúdicas que se mostram alternativas consistentes para o desenvolvimento de produções textuais em sala de aula. Para o autor, o erro não é algo equivocado e a ser consertado, mas uma possibilidade criativa de escrita e reescrita. Nesta pesquisa-ação o objetivo é analisar os resultados da aplicação de algumas das propostas rodarianas no processo de escrita e reescrita das narrativas ficcionais dos estudantes de uma turma do 5.º ano, em um colégio particular do município de Curitiba. A pesquisa ressalta a eficácia da utilização dessas propostas e destaca-as como possibilidades na formação de leitores e escritores do literário já nos anos iniciais do Ensino Fundamental.

ПИСЬМО ЯК ТЕРАПІЯ І СЕНС В РОМАНІ АНН-СОФІ БРАСМ “НАШЕ ПОПЕРЕДНЄ ЖИТТЯ” (2014)

Background. The article regards specifics of a fictional narrative on trauma from the perspective of self-writing by a fictional character. Based on a range of concepts of storytelling as a means of constructing one's identity, an instrument of dealing with posttraumatic consequences, and a form of recovering memory lacunes, formulated by literary critics (Ph. Lejeune, J. Derrida, J. Pavlenko), philosophers (P. Ricoeur), as well as sociologists (J.-C. Kaufmann, A. Giddens), it has been attempted to analyze self-writing strategies as a psychanalytical quest performed by characters in a novel by a contemporary French writer Anne-Sophie Brasme Our previous life (2014). Several conclusions have been made on therapeutic, cathartic, and cognitive impacts within different types of self-writing strategies of the female protagonist (namely, diary and novels by her). Methods. The study primarily aims to integrate the concept of narrative identity proposed by a French philosopher Paul Ricoeur who conceives narrative as an instrument of overcoming the gap between basic philosophical categories, in particular selfhood and identity, as well as apply it in relation to the construction of the narrative identity of the heroine-writer, who experiences deep trauma throughout her life. The analysis of the work uses the personal concept of the French sociologist J.-K. Kaufmann, for whom the narrative in the light of writing about oneself is not only a powerful means of storytelling, but also a tool of for building life perspective through making key choices suggested by narration on oneself. These concepts are revealed on the example of the mechanics of writing on oneself of the main character of the novel chosen for analysis against the background of theses assumed by Philip Lejeune, Jacques Derrida, and Anthony Giddens. Results. The study aims to reveal the life path of the female heroine as a writer, who chooses writing as a way of both escaping from reality and experiencing her trauma be rediscovering it throughout writing about traumatic past. It is concluded that as the heroine thrives towards her past, whereas a clearer perspective of her present and future is built, where writing on oneself appears as a precious key guide between those opposed layers of her hearting psyche. Conclusion. Based on the results of the research, several generalizations are made allowing us to reveal the therapeutic and meaning-making role of artistic writing as a powerful mean of living deeply traumatic experience.

Geopolitical Configurations in the Fictional Terrains of Elif Shafak

Geopolitical Configurations in the Fictional Terrains of Elif Shafak

가능세계의 양상 논리 시스템을 활용한 전설 서사 분석 모델 연구

This study develops a new analysis methodology for legendary narratives based on the possible world theory. As part of this, it develops a narrative analysis model. Unlike “traditional narratology,” possible world theory enables new and diverse approaches related to narrative by establishing various worlds created through stories, and it allows the establishment of related hypotheses and theories. Particularly, it provides a methodology for a new understanding of narratives that are difficult to establish in literature or history, such as legendary narratives.
 Legends are often regarded as fictional narratives that have a certain degree of historicity with temporal and spatial limitations and evidence but are differentiated from history. However, according to White, history is also a fictional narrative that creates a specific world by constructing a plot and indicates a specific ideology or meaning. Finally, historical narratives are simply narratives related to the history of actual events, whereas legendary narratives are non-historical narratives about a world believed to have existed. By breaking away from the conventional perspective of mimesis and assuming various possible worlds, we can plan a new methodology for narrative research by examining the worlds presented by narratives.
 In this discussion, a model for analyzing legend narratives was presented using Doležel's modal logic system. The alethic, deontic, axiological, and epistemic plots were established as segmented units and analysis items that operate in the story world. The modes of each stage of the narrative were analyzed and connected to create meaning in the form of a single sentence. This analysis model was applied to Song Si-yeol legends handed down in the Goesan region to analyze the composition principles of the narrative text and the meaning of the narrative. By applying the secondary narrative analysis model using a modal logic system, it is possible to examine the semantics of the story world within a systematic framework, rather than simply finding the primary indicative meaning or subjective and abstract commentary of the legendary narratives.

Resisting Paranoid Doctrines and Logic of Violence: A Saidian Literary Humanist Perspective on Selected South Asian Short Fictional Narratives

Resisting Paranoid Doctrines and Logic of Violence: A Saidian Literary Humanist Perspective on Selected South Asian Short Fictional Narratives

From Fiction to Reality: Harnessing the Power of Imaginative Narratives to Shape the Future of the Metaverse

This scholarly paper presents an innovative conceptual framework that draws upon insights from fictional narratives to inform the evolution of the metaverse, a burgeoning digital ecosystem with transformative potential. The study examines key elements of fictional works, including world-building techniques, social interaction dynamics, narrative structures, and ethical considerations, to illuminate the complexities of designing immersive virtual environments. Our primary findings indicate that consistency and coherence in world-building significantly enhance user immersion and engagement in virtual environments. Furthermore, the integration of diverse cultural and historical elements in the metaverse can foster inclusivity and enrich user experiences. Additionally, ethical considerations, such as privacy, digital identity, and accessibility, are paramount to the development of a responsible and inclusive metaverse. These findings underscore the importance of fiction as a source of inspiration, foresight, and caution for metaverse development. The proposed framework aims to amalgamate the imaginative realms of fiction with the practical applications of virtual environments, thereby facilitating the creation of a metaverse that is engaging, inclusive, and ethically responsible.

Between Fiction and History Biographical Narratives of Architects in Turkey

Bu çalışma, mimarlığın geçmişle ilişkisinde biyografik anlatıların aracılığını tartışmayı amaçlamaktadır. Tarihyazımının eski ve köklü yazın türlerinden biri olan biyografi (yaşamöyküsü), mimarlık tarihyazımının geçmişi anlama ve yeniden kurma çabasında çokça başvurduğu üretken ve ilham verici yollardan biridir. Biyografi, otobiyografi, hatıra, nehir söyleşi, gezi notları olarak sınıflayabileceğimiz, mimar monografisi ve mimarın bütün eserleri (oeuvre complete) gibi yayın türlerinde izleri takip edilen, bir bireyi ve/ya yaşamöyküsünü merkezine alarak kurulan bu anlatılar, edebî yazınla tarihyazımı arasında gider gelir. Bir diğer deyişle bazı yaşamöyküleri edebiyat, bazıları ise tarih alanına aittir. Ne var ki yaşamöyküsel anlatı, tarihyazımının doğasında var olan ve mimarlığı tarihsel bir perspektifle analiz etmede sıklıkla karşımıza çıkan makro-tarih ve mikro-tarih, nesnellik ve öznellik, kurmaca ve olgusallık, geçmiş ve şimdi, birey ve toplum tartışmalarına doğrudan temas eder ve bunlardan doğan açılımlardan beslenir. Bu nedenle, tarihyazımı ve biyografinin uzun yıllara dayanan ilişkisine, benzerlikleri ve farklılıklarına dair antik çağdan günümüze uzanan tartışmalara rağmen biyografik anlatı, yöntem ve olanaklar çerçevesinde halen güncel bir tarihyazımı yöntemi olarak kullanılmaktadır. Son dönemde Türkiye’de, uluslararası ortamdaki gelişmelere paralel bir şekilde biyografi çalışmalarına duyulan ilginin arttığı gözlemleniyor. Biyografik anlatının popülerleşmesi, çeşitlenmesi ve yaygınlaşması mimarlık alanını da etkilemektedir. Bu, aynı zamanda bize mimarlık tarihi yazımı ile biyografik anlatılar arasındaki çok katmanlı, karmaşık ilişkiyi (yeniden) düşünme fırsatı veriyor. Bu bağlamda amacım, yaşamöyküsel anlatıların mimarlık tarihyazımındaki rolünü mimarların otobiyografileri aracılığıyla incelemektir. Burada bireyin kendi öyküsünü kurduğu anlatıların tarihyazımına getirdiği (yeni) açılımlar ile yönteme dair sorunların tahlili çalışmanın merkezinde yer alıyor. Çalışma, tarih(yazımı) ve biyografi arasındaki ilişkiyi ele alan mevcut yazının ve ortaya koyduğu kuramsal çerçevelerin analizine dayanarak mimarlık tarihyazımı için bir altlık ve mimarlık alanındaki (oto)biyografi çalışmaları için bir temel oluşturmayı deniyor.