Narrative Mode Research Articles

Nineteenth-century narratives of addiction: Relational harm and the child as witness

Through close reading of medical and cultural texts, this article demonstrates how the narrativisation of relational harm underpinned the emerging categorisation of ‘addiction’ in the 19th century: excessive consumption was conceived through its detrimental impact upon others, and more specifically, upon the family. The problem was portrayed as physiological, psychological, and social: ‘addiction’ could not be located securely within a single individual, nor was it conceived simply as a social vice. While other societal themes emerge in the medical writing of the period, such as the relationship between drinking and criminality, and the visibility of drinking in the working-classes, these are not presented as proto-diagnostic criteria in the same way as relational harm. In theorising addiction, medicine relied upon rhetorical devices and narrative modes, and authors and artists took an active role in defining the terms of the debate around drinking, drug use, and gambling. Charles Dickens and George Cruikshank represent childhood through the adult's compulsive behaviour, which the child witnesses, while the adult's behaviour itself is conceived as harm directed towards child. The article demonstrates how 21st-century attitudes, particularly located in the fields of psychiatric diagnosis and child protection social work, echo debates established by 19th-century narratives, arguing that that the disease model of addiction was closely associated with the medico-legal production of childhood. Nineteenth-century narratives of addiction therefore anticipate late 20th- and 21st-century attitudes regarding the impact of parental substance use upon children.

Respons-Able Trees. On Permaculture Ethics of Responsibility in the Films of the Exhibition "Cambio" (2020)

The extensive research project Cambio (2020) by the Italian designer duo Formafantasma focuses on the tree, the forest in its function of securing the existence of humans, animals and other plants. The project uses various forms of critical representation and storytelling to explore the connections between exploitation, consumer culture and colonialism in the face of the industrial timber industry. The question is: What responsibility do we bear in relation to the treatment of trees and what response-ability do trees themselves have? Based on three essayistic short films and other objects from the Cambio exhibition, my contribution addresses these questions of responsibility and respons-ability with regard to the relationship between humans and trees. In the sense of Donna Haraway, the what and how of artistic representation and narration itself becomes a question of response-ability - i.e. the possibility of becoming responsible in responding. Here, with Haraway in mind, the ethically necessary perspective unfolds of not having to distinguish between a real world and a world of stories and narratives, but of being able to think material-semiotic worlds in a (responsible) situated way and allow them to emerge. This paper proposes response-ability as a conceptual and analytical rubric and as a guiding ethical practice for the new materialist-inspired endeavor to rethink human and non-human interdependency in relation to trees. I will intruduce the exhibition Cambio and three of its films as an exemplary site of narrative and representational modes that have the potential to sensitize us to those relations of interdependency.

Research on the Constructive Narrative Mode of Film based on the Embodied Imagination Theory

Psychoanalytic theory can be used to analyze the narrative mode of the film to explain psychological problems from the perspective of dreams. Based on the theory of embodied imagination, this study uses the text analysis method to analyze the film constructive narrative mode embodied in the film Deep Sea through the case study. The film constructs the sand play narrative space and uses nonlinear narrative techniques to reflect the three major characteristics of the film’s constructive narrative mode based on the theory of embodied imagination: the integration of authenticity and illusion in image construction, the penetration of emotional emergence and the process of image experience, and the realization of healing effects both on and off-screen. In the research process, the advantages and disadvantages of film works are analyzed. The advantages of free narrative logic and immersive movie-watching experience are accompanied by the disadvantages of increasing the threshold of movie-watching and large investment risks. This study provides a reference for the construction of the theoretical system of film constructive narrative mode.

Marginalized People and the Big World: on the Multiple Narrative Modes of Microhistory

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Visible and Invisible: Tokening the Memory of the Holocaust in Fascist Concentration Camps

ABSTRACT This article explores commemorative plaques at former fascist concentration camps in Italy, focusing on how they reflect the memory of the Holocaust. Using lexical analysis to rank word frequency, the study identifies four narrative modes: Culpabilisation, Heroisation, Victimisation, and Redemption. Before the establishment of Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2000, plaques predominantly highlighted the Italian Resistance against Nazis, with minimal acknowledgement of the Holocaust. Although there has been a shift towards recognising the Holocaust since Law 211, the Resistance narrative remains central. Fascism is rarely mentioned, indicating a tendency to downplay Italy’s fascist past and its Nazi alliance. While these plaques meet legal requirements for remembrance, they often lack historical accuracy, focus on local events, and prioritise heroism over the recognition of atrocities and their perpetrators.

The Postmodern Narrative Techniques in Tim O'Brien's "How to Tell a True War Story"

The Vietnam War had an irreversible negative impact on the United States, Vietnam, and the world at large. Its effects extended beyond geopolitics and seeped into the domain of literature, where numerous works have profoundly depicted and contemplated the conflict. Tim O'Brien's "How to Tell a True War Story" stands as a prime example of such literature, set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. Drawing on Jean-Franois Lyotard's theory of postmodern metanarratives, this paper examines how O'Brien employs postmodern narrative techniques that diverge from traditional grand narratives to articulate the essence of his war fiction. Upon analysis, the paper contends that Tim O'Brien adopts the narrative mode of metafiction, blending narrative and commentary texts alongside real and fictive elements. By doing so, he seeks to alert readers to the constructed nature of both the textual and real worlds, encouraging them to perceive war through the lens of individuals' traumatic war experiences.

“Being / together”: Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other and the Black British Women’s Movement

Abstract This essay locates Bernardine Evaristo’s Booker Prize-winning novel Girl, Woman, Other (2019) within the sociopolitical history and written lineage of the Black women’s movement in Britain. It identifies contextual resonances with the 1970s and 1980s praxis of collaboration and collectivity and traces intertextual connections with Evaristo’s own early writing (including theater, verse fiction, and the radio story from which the novel evolved) and the periodicals, anthologies, and organization newsletters of the time. These references illuminate the novel’s structure, lineation, and narrative mode. I argue that Girl, Woman, Other reanimates the rallying call “we are here,” affirming the presence and diversity of Black lives in Britain, while its distinctive “fusion fiction” form actively engages readers, realizing the Black feminist political principle of “speaking out.”

“Think on the Bludy Serk:” Allegory and Figura in Henryson’s Minor Poem

This essay analyzes the allegorical mode of the previously understudied poem by Robert Henryson, The Bludy Serk. In Serk, a knight saves a lady whom he loves from an evil giant, dying in the process. This story is then compared to the story of Christ's Passion, and the poem concludes by identifying the two stories as, in some sense, the same story. This narrative mode is best described using the concept of figura as understood by Erich Auerbach in his essay on the subject. Serk is the only poem in Henryson's corpus which seems to employ this manner of constructing its narrative(s) and is relatively unique among lyrical poems about Christ's Passion in the later Middle Ages. In this regard, it seems to be innovative, and merits future study by Henryson scholars and students of allegory alike.

Plotting a New Course for Environmental Humanities

This article suggests that the notion of “the plot” has methodological and epistemological value for the environmental humanities. Conceptualized in the work of Sylvia Wynter, the plot—as material site and narrative mode crucial to the novel form—offers a heuristic for analyzing the conjuncture of political economy, social-cultural aesthetics, and power. The plot names places that have been created through improvisational forms of world-making against racial and socioecological domination. The plot also names an insurgent scheme that is staged from peripheralized places and that is crucial to maintaining these spaces of insurgent living. Plotting is presented as an analytical mode that offers scholars in the environmental humanities: a framework for place-specific historical-geographical and ecological study; a critical cartographical praxis; and an approach for examining the logics and affective relations of place production. Environmental humanities scholarship that engages with Black ecocriticism along these lines is well positioned to examine the geographies of the past, present, and future with attention to the racial politics of human embodiment. Such scholarship would be characterized by more careful use of spatial metaphors, ensuring that ecocriticism and broader environmental humanities work considers the material and physical racial ecologies alongside the discursive and representational environments.

C. S. Lewis’s Laugh at Modernism: The St(r)eam of Consciousness in “The Shoddy Lands”

Although C. S. Lewis wrote at a time when Modernism was in bloom, he highly decried this literary movement, clearly expressing his disapproval of the entire paradigm of that age. In the article “On Juvenile Tastes”, he claims that the contemporary literary world showed little concern with the narrative art, but more with literary novelties, a category in which he includes the famous technique of “the stream of consciousness”, which he critically nicknamed “the steam of consciousness”. Even if he never actually used this technique per se, he pretended to do so in the short story “The Shoddy Lands”, which explores the mind of Peggy, a very shallow character. The result is highly amusing and thought-provoking, showing in a literary manner his opinion about Modernism. This paper will analyse some aspects of the short story mentioned above in the light of the stream of consciousness technique and reveal Lewis’s intention in apparently engaging with this modernist psychological narrative mode.

You Equals Not-I: Avowal, Disavowal, and Second-Person Narration in Marlene van Niekerk’s Agaat

ABSTRACT This article examines the second-person narrative mode in Marlene van Niekerk’s Agaat. Its function is explained by situating the novel within that niche known as the “you-text.” But the generic function must also be accounted for within the thematic tensions of the novel, specifically those oscillations of avowal and disavowal. So a second concern is this: how does the novel speak back to narrative theory? How does its “compulsion to tell the truth” – shadowed by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission – trouble, expand or extend the typologies used to talk about texts where “you” consolidates narrator and narratee? Considering this consolidation as part of what might be called a narratology of the self, I suggest that Agaat’s “you” can be seen as further collapsing the roles of confessor and penitent. Such collapse reinforces the interiority of Milla’s self-addressed excoriations, since it mirrors the doubled consciousness of Protestant confession. But it also inaugurates a new type of address – the “implied you” – which turns on the reader as much as on the novel’s protagonist.

Influence of Neglectful Parenting Approaches on Self-esteem of Teenagers Aged 13-19 Years in Selected Day Secondary Schools in Lari Sub County in Kiambu County, Kenya

Purpose: Parents play a critical role in influencing the self-esteem of teenagers. The main aim of the study was to investigate how neglectful parenting approaches influence the self-esteem of teenagers aged 13- 19 years in day secondary schools in Lari Sub County, in Kiambu County, Kenya. Methodology: The researcher used a concurrent correlational research design. In this approach both qualitative and quantitative data collection strategies were used simultaneously to investigate the relationship between the variables. The target population was 4500 students. The sample size was 1280 participants. Questionnaires and structured interviews guides were used for data collection Stratified and Simple random sampling techniques were used to select the accessible study population. The qualitative data was collected using interview guides and presented thematically in narrative form. At the univariate level, the quantitative data was analyzed using (SPSS) software version 27 and presented in tables. At the bivariate level Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficient was used to obtain correlations and significance. Findings: From the descriptive findings 38.7% of the teenagers from neglectful parents are experiencing unhealthy self-esteem.24.0% of teenagers from authoritative parents have a healthy self-esteem. 37.3% of the teenagers had moderate self-esteem. The results also indicate that out of 1200 respondents (371) 30.9% of respondents had good experiences with their parents. 117(9.8%) had moderate experiences with their parents and 712(59.3%) had antagonistic experiences with their parents. From the inferential findings a statistically significant relationship was also found between neglectful parenting approach and teenage self-esteem, (r =0.740, p =.000). From thematic findings presented in narrative mode from school and peer counsellors, it was evident that neglectful parenting dominates the Lari Sub County region since most of the clients had unfavorable experiences with their parents. Few have lovely experiences with their parents. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The research was guided by the Albert Bandura Social Learning Theory. The theory provides insight that during their initial interaction with their family children observe and learn from the actions and behaviors of caregivers or parents. Therefore, decent actions, words and behaviors from parent’s influence positively the self-esteem of teenagers. The teenagers feel good, secure and loved to be part of a warm and loving family which gives them confidence to explore their world and try new things. However, toxic words, actions and behaviors in parental relationships with teenagers influence negatively the self-esteem of many teenagers. The study recommended that policy makers in the state department of early childhood education in Lari Sub County should embrace programs to educate teenagers on healthy ways to adapt to unfriendly experiences with neglectful parents since they cannot change them but they can only build their individual self-esteem. It also recommends that parents to be educated on the need to embrace authoritative parenting strategies to cultivate health self-esteem of teenagers.

Lu Xun’s Heteromodal Realism

Abstract This article posits modern Chinese realism as heteromodal, capable of encompassing many modes of narration from a plurality of literary movements. Heteromodality results from the heterochronic Chinese importation of Western literary history, the simultaneous reception of what were originally successive historical periods. The fountainhead of heteromodal Chinese realism is Lu Xun’s 1918 “Diary of a Madman,” one of the first modern vernacular Chinese short stories. Though Lu Xun has long been considered a foundational writer of realism in China, critics have complicated this designation by pointing out his modernist or symbolist proclivities. This article redefines Lu Xun’s realism by enlarging the scope of inquiry beyond “Diary” itself to scrutinize its main Russian intertexts: Nikolai Gogol’s 1835 story “Diary of a Madman” and Leonid Andreev’s 1904 novella Red Laugh. Examining the elements that Lu Xun’s story cannibalizes from Russian intertexts, which have themselves defied straightforward categorizations such as realism, the article intervenes in long-standing discussions about the nature of realism in modern China and, more broadly, in recent conversations about peripheral realism.

Сериалы и паузы: к проблеме монтажного шва

Unlike a classic film, which requires the audience’s attention from the first to the last frame, every series is forced to deal with pauses, which constitute the aesthetic specificity of this artistic format. Breaks between seasons, episodes, and sometimes blocks within a separate episode (transitions to advertising) are often carefully thought out by the creators and supported by specific tools that are designed to maintain the viewer’s interest in the work: a cliffhanger, retroactive continuity, the module “in previous episodes,” etc. Using film, television and literary series as a researcher material, the author analyzes the process of the audience’s encounter with a work — both during its direct perception and in anticipation of the next part. High discreteness of the serial rhythm leads the extralong form to a succession of drama crises, forcing it not only to develop the action forward but also to correct its own past, resolve logical inconsistencies, and reinterpret the events that have already happened. The article argues that a series deliberately abandons the fabula (plot) as an eventual given, introduces new unspoken conventions that its devoted viewers must accept, and receives the audience’s feedback, entering an interactive narrative mode.

The Contemporary Transformation of Thematic Connotation and Narrative Mode of Peking Opera from The Jewelry Purse

Artistic creation in any era reflects the collective consciousness in the context of the era in which it is created. From the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, Peking Opera has completed its transformation as a systematic performing art in the course of historical changes, while retaining its unique cultural heritage and traditional performance forms. This paper adopts the typical text The Jewelry Purse as the research subject in the review of the history of Peking Opera, conducts an in-depth analysis of the development of Peking Opera. By deconstructing the text of The Jewelry Purse, refines the modernity of The Jewelry Purse as evidence for discussing the changes in the modernity of Peking Opera in terms of themes and narrative modes. Peking Opera intensifies the reflection on the real situation by reinforcing the gap between the ideal and real society in its development process. As one of the excellent examples of Peking Operas self-renewal and transcendence, The Jewelry Purse can be created and expressed through the creators and performers realization of the reality in which they live, and resonate with audiences of different times.

Curated Content: an exploration of the act of (digital) mark-making in the form of analogue drawings

This paper proposes that posted online content can be understood as (digital) mark-making. Through research as creative practice in the form of drawings created with grey-lead pencil on paper (an analogue form of mark-making), the notion of (digital) mark-making is explored as an existential act. Dating back thousands of years, human mark-marking in the form of handprints can be found in caves in many parts of the world, a declaration that ‘I was here!’ Mark-making plays a role in human becoming, the self an ongoing creation rather than already being created, and over time, forms of mark-making evolved into artistic practice, cultural transmission, language and narrative modes for storytelling. With the introduction of the Internet, online content creation fulfils the same roles as traditional mark-making. Posting content online has become an existential act, a way to document one's existence and give proof of presence through storytelling – acts of (digital) mark-making. Current theories on the nature and social functionality of the Internet, particularly social media as modes for storytelling, are engaged to reflexively analyse the drawings which express human-lived experiences that now oscillate between virtuality and reality.

Expressing the Spatial Concepts of Interior Spaces in Residential Buildings of Huizhou, China: Narrative Methods of Wood-Carving Imagery

Expressing the Spatial Concepts of Interior Spaces in Residential Buildings of Huizhou, China: Narrative Methods of Wood-Carving Imagery

An Exploration of Realism in Death Narratives in Contemporary Chinese and Korean New Youth Films from a Global Cultural Perspective

With the advent of economic globalization leading to cultural globalization, countries are integrating and innovating their indigenous cultures while absorbing and borrowing from the film cultures of other nations. Chinese and Korean New Youth Films employ a multi-genre narrative mode combining "youth" with realism. This paper conducts a comparative study of Chinese new youth film Better Days and the Korean new youth film Next Sohee, exploring the influence of global cultural perspectives on Chinese and Korean New Youth Films from the perspective of death narratives, the realistic application of death narratives in Chinese and Korean New Youth Films, as well as the differentiated narrative strategies of Chinese and Korean New Youth Films. This study further extends to the real significance and value of death imagery in youth films.

How Narrative Skills Associate With Peer Relations

Narrative skills are essential for children's social development. However, existing research primarily focuses on narratives' impact on children's cognitive abilities, with limited attention given to the relationship between narrative skills and peer interactions. This study aims to explore how oral and written narrative skills are associated with peer relations from a social perspective. 166 Chinese primary school children were randomly assigned to tasks of oral and written narratives, as well as peer nominations. Results indicate that grade 5 students performed significantly better than grade 3 students in both written and oral narrative tasks. Moreover, the level of written narrative proficiency surpassed that of oral skills. Significant interactions were also found among grade level, gender, and narrative modes. Crucially, narrative skills exhibited positive correlations with peer nominations, with stronger correlations seen for written narratives. These findings have important implications for narrative research and language instruction.

Reading (in) Graham Greene's The Ministry of Fear (1943)

Abstract This essay offers a transgeneric reading of Graham Greene's 1943 novel The Ministry of Fear, first tracing the emergence of spy fiction from invasion fiction at the end of the nineteenth century and then establishing William Le Queux's influence on the culture of espionage in Britain as well as in British spy fiction. Following on from this genealogy of genre, it interrogates the novel's protagonist's claim that “[t]he world has been remade by William Le Queux” in the context of the dual histories of espionage in Britain and the spy in British fiction, while attending to the novel's own reception of those histories. Focusing on the significance of the novel's intertextual and paratextual evidence in an interpretation of the novel's unconventional narrative strategies, the essay examines hybrid modes of reading the novel, as well as reading in the novel as a way of parsing its entangled narrative modes, levels, and discourses. Greene encourages transgeneric reading as a possible resolution to the epistemological uncertainty readers experience at the novel's close due to its troubling of genre expectations, its allusiveness, and, ultimately, its eschewal of narrative closure. At the same time, the essay proposes that, in attending in spy fiction to what is read and how it is read, we might better appreciate the challenges presented by the rehabilitation of a genre that also requires disentangling the many hierarchies of modernist cultural production.