Narrative Of Events Research Articles

Compelling Legends

Abstract This article contributes to recent discussions regarding the reliability and modes of historical usability of Shivḥei ha-Beshṭ—the earliest Ḥasidic hagiography about the Baʿal Shem Ṭov, the alleged founder of Ḥasidism, and his circle. It considers the biographical portrayal of one of the members of the Beshṭ’s circle as an example for the narrative construction of early Ḥasidism. An unknown text is then presented as external evidence for one of the legends, enabling insight into the prolonged formation of this hagiographical compendium from the recounted events until its publication in 1814. This test case contributes to inquiries such as the place of historical events in sacred narratives, the cultural contexts for the composition of such legends, and the significance of their apparent reliability as the narrator’s agendas towards audience’s appreciation.

Construction or updating? Event model processes during visual narrative comprehension

The plot of a narrative is represented in the form of event models in working memory. Because only parts of the plot are actually presented and information is continually changing, comprehenders have to infer a good portion of a narrative and keep their mental representation updated. Research has identified two related processes (e.g., Gernsbacher, 1997): During model construction (shifting, laying a foundation) at large coherence breaks an event model is completely built anew. During model updating (mapping) at smaller omissions, however, the current event model is preserved, and only changed parts are updated through inference processes. Thus far, reliably distinguishing those two processes in visual narratives like comics was difficult. We report a study (N = 80) that aimed to map the differences between constructing and updating event models in visual narratives by combining measures from narrative comprehension and event cognition research and manipulating event structure. Participants watched short visual narratives designed to (not) contain event boundaries at larger coherence breaks and elicit inferences through small omissions, while we collected viewing time measures as well as event segmentation and comprehensibility data. Viewing time, segmentation, and comprehensibility data were in line with the assumption of two distinct comprehension processes. We thus found converging evidence across multiple measures for distinct model construction and updating processes in visual narratives.

Narrating Anger Appropriately: Implications for Narrative Form and Successful Coping

We propose that emotion psychology would significantly gain from including narrative(s) and the conversational negotiation of appropriateness. Using the example of anger, we argue that narrators need to construct plausible narratives of emotional events to achieve validating responses by listeners. We argue first that narrators attempt to demonstrate that the appraisal conditions for their emotion are given so that the emotion fits the narrated events. Second, we argue that this in turn explains why narratives of specific emotions exhibit specific forms. Third, we argue that coping with emotional experiences is helped by narrating such that the fittingness of emotions is demonstrated. We conclude that narrative plays an important role for identifying, processing, communicating, and eliciting emotions.

Ukrainiečių pasakojimai apie karo pradžią: svarbiausios temos, struktūra, kompozicija

The article aims to consider the main themes and structures of autobiographical narratives by the Ukrainian people about the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war. It analyses narratives of life events becoming the elements of storytelling about the beginning of the war. The article focuses mainly on the plot structure of stories about the war’s outbreak, and the narrators’ self-presentation strategies. Folklore tools reveal typical plots of autobiographical narratives about the outbreak of war. The symbolic meanings of oral histories attributed in modern Ukrainian culture to various events, people and things are considered. Methods of structural narratology have proven to be advantageous in this research. Autobiographical narratives concerning the outbreak of the war coincide with the five criteria of the eventfulness level by Wolf Schmid: relevance, unpredictability, persistence, irreversibility and non-iterativity. The predominant motifs under consideration include reports regarding the beginning of the war, leaving one’s home, seeking refuge in shelters, undergoing evacuation, contemplating the causes of the war, predicting the war, and reflecting on the cruel nature of warfare.

The roles of history in accomplishing digital transformation: a dynamic capabilities perspective

ABSTRACT Strategy research on the uses of history in organisations have mushroomed in the recent years. While one of the main uses of history is to accommodate strategic change, little is known about the historical dynamics underpinning this process. In this study, we used the dynamic capabilities theoretical perspective to argue that the managerial ability to strategically use history is a factor related to successful strategic change. A case study of the digital transformation of a multinational ICT company was carried out to explore the strategic use of history. The company's history portrays a series of critical events which served as a basis to theorise the narrative of these past events in accomplishing digital transformation. We provided in-depth discussion of the organisation behaviours that preceded this strategic change. We contribute to literature by discussing the role of specific history-oriented practices in accomplishing digital transformation and their relationship with two emerging history-based managerial abilities.

Il fallimento di una vita inabituale: Henry James e la costruzione della «nostra eroina» Isabel Archer


 
 
 This article aims to raise crucial aspects of the philosophy of habit found in late 19th-century literature, particularly through an examination of Henry James’ portrayal of his character Isabel Archer. This goal is pursued through the analysis of two interconnected aspects forming the theoretical core of this contribution. Firstly, the focus is on Isabel Archer’s psychological depiction as a fundamental contribution of the English and American literature on the theme of habit, especially during the latter half of the 19th century. By contextualizing James’ work, exploring links to Peirce’s pragmatist philosophy and habit theory, the centrality of habit reflection in the psychological structuring of characters, interwoven with philosophical and narrative theories of individuality, is revealed. Furthermore, this reflection provides interpretative keys to understanding Henry James’ narrative choices concerning Isabel’s fate in the novel. Then this article directly specifically examines the construction of Isabel’s self which unfolds through the entire narrative events. The interpretative hypothesis guiding the investigation focuses on the connection between Isabel’s attempts to conduct life without habit and the resulting errors in judgment. To support this hypothesis, the importance of comparing key characters such as Gilbert Osmond and Madame Merle is highlighted. Through the narrative, it will emerge a peculiar ontological structure of the concept of habit. Moreover, through the psychological portraits in the novel, a critical exploration of James’ idea of individuality arises — acknowledging social dynamics and the ontological force of habit, rejecting the dichotomy represented by an optimistic individualism and a degenerate conventional life. The conclusion asserts that Isabel’s pursuit of an unhabitual life inevitably leads to failure. The solution does not lie in a rigid, conventional, dichotomous view of habit. Instead, James argues for a dynamic, relational view of habit: a fundamental aspect of being that must be acknowledged to understand the mechanisms that lead us from the variety of possibilities to the limited “actualities” of life. Through these two interrelated perspectives, the article aims to illuminate the psychological depth of Isabel Archer’s character, demonstrating how her story represents a cornerstone in the broader discussion of the nature and evolution of habit in 19th- century literature. From that, it sets the stage for a more comprehensive discussion on habit’s role in shaping characters and narratives during this historical period.
 
 

Was the Royal List Included in Manetho’s Work?

The author tries to clarify whether the list of Manethonian Dynasties which is present in Manetho’s material as rendered by Africanus and Eusebius (who were basing on the missing Manetho’s work) was a part of the original work by Manetho, or the epitomators compiled this list by themselves, extracting relevant information from various parts of Manetho’s narrative. Without special discussions, the second point of view is broadly accepted. The author supposes that this issue can be solved by comparing the list of Manetho’s dynasties in Africanus and Eusebius’ version with the parts of Manetho’s narrative that have survived in the quotation and retelling of Josephus and cover the times of the Dynasties XV–XIX. In the narrative, the kings of the Dynasties XV–XIX are listed in such an arrangement that their respective groups could not be identified as special segments (dynasties) into which the Egyptians divided their royal sequence, but would remain to be understood as members of one sequence without division into special segments who were only named in the interruptions filled by narrations of events. In addition, the narrative does not contain some important information about the dynasties that the list by Africanus and Eusebius preserves. Thus, Manetho had himself included a list of dynasties and kings as a kind of appendix in his work, and it was this that the epitomators reproduced first; from it, through the Epitome, the chronographs received their data about dynasties that were missing in the narrative.

Multimodal deixis in media discourse: Film vs TV interview narratives

The article explores two media discourse formats, film and TV interview as manifesting the specific distribution of two communicative modalities — speech and gesture — in the multimodal deixis of discourse space construal in narratives. To identify the attribution of speech and gesture to two media formats, the study contrasts the plot contents and viewer engagement as two major coordinates of discourse space in media. We hypothesize that since these two formats display differences in their plot content and viewer engagement characteristics, their distribution might affect the way the actors employ speech and gesture to present the discourse space. The research data are 20 film and TV interview narratives with 10 highly rated Russian actors (5 men and 5 women). The study exploits the method of multimodal analysis to determine the contingency patterns of discursive schemata presenting discourse space in speech and of discursive schemata presenting object of reference, move and frame of reference in deictic gesture. The results show that multimodal deixis contributes to intensifying both types of these characteristics. While multimodal deixis in film manifests the preference for metonymic pointing, placement indication and speech event construal; in TV interview, we observe the significant prevalence of metaphoric pointing, path indication and narrative event construal. Additionally, TV interviews display the speech schemata specifying information and accentuating the place of referent within the speech or narrative event. Overall, the study shows that there are two basic types of discourse characteristics which produce higher distinctions in multimodal deixis between film and TV interview formats; these are different narrative regimes and different combination of staged performance and spontaneity.

Время — вперед: необратимость события, аффект и нарративы будущего

Contemporary fiction and film are full of complex narrative forms. They attempt to make readers’ and viewers’ experience more perplexed, while also challenging and redefining the basic elements of narrative. The forking-path narrative also highlights the complexity of contemporary narrative forms: it presents a storyworld which encompasses multiple possible alternative worlds. Events within it can be either reversible or irreversible, and each time they remain unpredictable to the reader. The author examines the irreversibility of events in forking-path narratives on the example of the Paul Auster’s novel 4321. While reversibility of events emphasizes that the fabula can be changed in each storyline and, as a result, it becomes multiversion, irreversibility of events instead has a different effect. Irreversible events operate in forking-path narratives on the principle of repetition: they invariably recur in each storyline, and this recurrence enhances (more frequently a tragic) experience. The recurrence of irreversible events also creates a specific rhythm within the narrative. Such rhythmic patterns emerge at the narrative level and have a major role in shaping the reader’s experience, requiring bodily response, i.e. potentially resulting in bodily feelings. It constructs a mimesis which can be understood as “carnal” (in terms of Vivian Sobchack), with less mediation between storyworld and reader reality. The experience generated by irreversible events conflicts with another, shaped by reversible events, and together they generate the effect of a chaotic temporal movement, typical for narratives that can be regarded as “unruly” and “extreme,” with a versatile (and simultaneous) impact on the reader.

Characteristics of domestic violence perpetrators with dementia from police records using text mining.

Few studies have examined the characteristics of domestic violence (DV) committed by people with dementia. We provide an overview of DV perpetrated by people with dementia in the community based on police reports of attendances at DV events. A text mining method was used on 416,441 New South Wales (NSW) police narratives of DV events from January 2005 to December 2016 to extract information for Persons of Interest (POIs) with mentions of dementia. Events involving those with dementia accounted for a relatively low proportion of total DV events (<1%). Of the 260 DV events with a dementia mention for the POI, the most common abuse types were assault (49.7%) and verbal abuse (31.6%). Spouses were the largest group of victims (50.8%) followed by children (8.8%). Physical abuse was common, occurring in 82.4% of events, but injuries were relatively mild. Although weapons were infrequently used, they were involved in 5% of events, mostly by POIs aged 75 years and older. Similarly, the POIs were mainly aged 75+ years (60%), however the proportion of those aged <65 was relatively high (20.8%) compared to the reported prevalence of dementia in that age group. This study demonstrates that some cases of DV perpetrated by people with reported dementia are significant enough to warrant police involvement. This highlights the need to proactively discuss the potential for violence as part of the holistic management and support family members, particularly those caring for people with young-onset dementias.

ОБ ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИИ "НАСТОЯЩЕГО ИСТОРИЧЕСКОГО" (PRAESENS HISTORICUM) ВРЕМЕНИ В ИСЛАНДСКИХ САГАХ

The article examines the phenomenon of alternation of tenses in the Icelandic sagas, or more precisely, the inclusion into a narrative of past events, as the sagas are, along with the normal forms of the past tense, forms of the so-called “present historical”. This practice is not an exclusive feature of the Old Icelandic language but is found in Indo-European languages of different historical eras and geographical locations. Saga scholars, whose works are discussed here, have paid much attention to this phenomenon and put forward numerous interpretations of this narrative mode, both grammatical and stylistic. The author of the article adheres to the view that the alternation of tenses was so extensively used by the saga authors because it enabled them, within the framework of the stylistic objectivity inherent in the saga genre, to make the narrative more lively and emotional, as if the events described were happening before the eyes of their listeners/readers.

Multistructure Contrastive Learning for Pretraining Event Representation.

Event representation aims to transform individual events from a narrative event chain into a set of low-dimensional vectors to help support a series of downstream applications, e.g., similarity differentiation and missing event prediction. Traditional event representation models tend to focus on single modeling perspectives and thus are incapable of capturing physically disconnected yet semantically connected event segments. We, therefore, propose a heterogeneous event graph model (HeterEvent) to explicitly represent such event segments. Furthermore, another challenge in traditional event representation models is inherited from the datasets themselves. Data sparsity and insufficient labeled data are commonly encountered in event chains, easily leading to overfitting and undertraining. Therefore, we extend HeterEvent with a multistructure contrastive learning framework (MulCL) to alleviate the training risks from two structural perspectives. From the sequential perspective, a sequential-view contrastive learning component (SeqCL) is designed to facilitate the acquisition of sequential characteristics. From the graph perspective, a graph-view contrastive learning component (GraCL) is proposed to enhance the robustness of graph training by comparing different corrupted graphs. Experimental results confirm that our proposed MulCL [W+E] model outperforms state-of-the-art baselines. Specifically, compared with the previously proposed supervised model HeterEvent [W+E] [Zheng et al. (2020)], MulCL [W+E] shows an average improvement of 5.3% in terms of accuracy for the inference-ability-based tasks. For the representation-ability-based tasks, MulCL [W+E] achieves an average improvement of 2.7% in terms of accuracy for the hard similarity tasks and an improvement of 4.1% in terms of the Spearman's correlation for the transitive sentence similarity task, respectively.

FEVER DREAMS AND THE FUTURE OF NOSTALGIA ON TIKTOK

This paper contributes to the growing body of literature that interrogates the modalities of nostalgia afforded in, by, and through digital media technologies with a focus on its performative dimension within one social formation of nostalgia – the TikTok aesthetic. Drawing on a fine-grained, qualitative artifact analysis of the most viewed video in #nostalgicore on TikTok, this paper asks how the platform’s socio-technical affordances enable and/or constrain Boym’s “restorative” (regressive) and “reflective” (progressive) modalities of nostalgia as a basis for action. Drawing on performance studies and emotion theory, I conceptualize nostalgia as “emotive” to foreground its performative dynamics and allow for further study of nostalgia as a performance or “narrative event” that articulates time, space, and affective feeling. Through the interplay of TikTok’s temporal and spatial affordances, I find that TikTok permits the feeling of the "thick present" to emerge, encouraging liminal, fever dream-like performances of nostalgia in which young people imaginatively construct nostalgic worlds. I argue that this practice constitutes a form of digital placemaking that resists normative assumptions of nostalgia operating on a linear temporal horizon of action (i.e., backward/past vs. forward/future) as it is made, remade, and algorithmically circulated. Contributing to recent work on “algorithmic nostalgia,” these findings suggest that creative and mnemonic practices are entangled in algorithmically structured aesthetic social formations of nostalgia and invite further consideration to how TikTok encourages the “mnemonic imagination” through performance. Keywords: nostalgia, TikTok, performance, temporality, affect, social media affordances

A Delta of Time

In the early modern Low Countries, narrative cartography was a thriving new medium aimed at disseminating information about events concerning the Dutch Revolt. News maps combined spatial and narrative information in order to tell the story of a recent event to a large audience, representing actions, moments, and (spatial) change. They were in essence temporal products. To keep the maps topical, map publishers released new map states by modifying their copperplates and adding the latest news, sometimes multiple times. This article analyses the ‘updated’ map series by the Amsterdam publisher Claes Jansz Visscher that reported on events in the Scheldt river area between Bergen op Zoom and Antwerp (such as the 1631 Battle of the Slaak). The central question is how and why Visscher incorporated temporal information into his news maps. First, it shows the tools and strategies how Visscher, in comparison to other Northern and Southern Netherlandish news map publishers, added temporal information to his maps. Then, the rhythm of mapping and the map narratives are put in the context of real-time events and news culture, and the circulation and use of the maps are interpreted in the context of memory culture and historical consciousness. The article shows how news maps imply specific narratives of events and invite contemporary and later users to engage with and ‘navigate’ the past, present, and future in ways that transcend the limiting idea of time as a linear progress.

How ASEAN and Western media covers China’s Belt and Road Initiative: a case study of representation of the Laos-China railway under international news flows framework

The research uses the coverage of the Laos-China railway as a case to compare how media in ASEAN versus Western countries represents China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Under the framework of international news flows, through investigating the agenda-setting, news source distribution and frames of 137 stories by 42 news outlets in seven ASEAN and seven Western countries, the study finds that the long-existing imbalances in volume, direction and content of information in international news flows have seen continuities and changes. On the one hand, the international news flows remain unidirectional from the center toward semi-peripheral and peripheral zones in the world system, rather than the other way around. On the other hand, the dominance of Western media in the flows as major news suppliers providing the master narratives of most international events has been disrupted due to the emergence of counter-narratives offered by alternative news providers such as China’s Xinhua and Asian News Network. Such continuities and changes in international communication flows exemplified by the media coverage of a China’s BRI project serve as both empirical evidence of a broader global power shift and a thermometer measuring the Global North’s and Global South’s reactions to such a shift.

ОТРАЖЕНИЕ СОЦИОКУЛЬТУРНОГО КОНТЕКСТА В НАРРАТИВЕ (НА ПРИМЕРЕ ПОВЕСТВОВАНИЙ ВИКТОРИАНСКОЙ ЭПОХИ)

The article considers the issue of narrative sociocultural orientation as a way of translating general cultural norms and values, mechanism of social interaction organization. The author substantiates relationship between narrative texts structural-content characteristics and the corresponding sociocultural context. A method of researching a narrative text is proposed. It involves study of narration event structure and reflected value and role models in social relations organization, correspondence of the narration main plot to traditional archetypical plots and presence of the storyline narrative transformations is revealed. Empirical material of the study is the Victorian era narrative texts. Analyzing narrative forms of that time, the author reveals sociocultural changes influence on textual characteristics. Compositional and plot construction of narratives represents the Victorian era heterogeneity. The narration reflects social contradictions between conservative system of values inculcated by church and the state and search for relevant spiritual guidelines by progressively thinking individuals. Rapid growth of science and new industrial relations undermined faith in the biblical truths stability, the Victorian system of values impeccability. These sociocultural tendencies find expression in the motifs of open or veiled satirical criticism of the Victorian society hypocritical morality, assertion of human rights to boldly express their own assessment of social issues through narrative storyline event blocks inversion.

P38: A qualitative study on the impacts of stressful life events on the mental health of older adults in Colombia

Background:Many older adults in Colombia have lived through violent and stressful life events, particularly in areas of poverty where the problem of mental ill-health is commonly tigmatized in lower- and middle-income countries. The aim of this qualitative study was to understand the impact of stressful life events on the mental health and wellbeing of older Colombians living in areas of relative poverty.Methods:Older adults (aged 60+) living in the Turbo region in Colombia were interviewed face-to-face between August and December 2021. Participants were recruited via snowball sampling based on criteria of ethnicity, gender, age, and place of residence. Transcripts were coded in Spanish and English by at least two research team members, using inductive thematic analysis.Results:Twenty-six older adults participated in the study. Four overarching themes were generated: Living in violent and dangerous communities; Disturbing gender violence and gender roles; Lack of mental health awareness; Coping mechanisms. Older adults experienced a long narrative of stressful life events, from their youth into old age. Younger generations appeared to disrespect older members of Society, and participants witnessed a constant availability of around them – both interpersonal and within their neighbourhoods. Without any mental health support or awareness, older adults coped by merely accepting the extreme situations or seeking solace in their faith.Conclusions:The health system and Government need to build up trust in its institutions and generate an awareness of mental health, as older Colombians will not approach psychological support otherwise. Intergenerational community-based interventions embedded within neighbourhoods may provide a first avenue of mental health support.

Institutional memory and legal conflict in the Old Borough of Durham, 1300–1450

AbstractHistorians have long used the archives of major institutions to shed light on medieval society, but in more recent decades the focus has turned towards the proliferation of legal documentation possessed by those lower down the social order and the increasing penetration of legal processes into their everyday lives. Yet, in recapturing this world, there is a danger that we take for granted the immense documentary power of a large institutional repository. This article follows several legal conflicts across the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries involving the monks of Durham Priory to demonstrate the extent of this archival culture, showing how they turned to their vast array of documentary evidence for information about those who had incurred their wrath. Using their archives, they traced the descent of holdings, the offices held by key individuals, and previous payments in account rolls, all in a bid to demonstrate their rights, the ‘abuses’ of officials, and to counter legal opposition. Not content, the monks then compiled this evidence into an alternative narrative of events that questioned previous legal proceedings and ceremonies, constructing an institutional memory that saw contradictory documentation as ‘entirely most falsely forged’.

Hippocampal-cortical interactions during event boundaries support retention of complex narrative events

According to most memory theories, encoding involves continuous communication between the hippocampus and neocortex, but recent work has shown that key moments at the end of an event, called event boundaries, may be especially critical for memory formation. We sought to determine how communication between the hippocampus and neocortical regions during the encoding of naturalistic events related to subsequent retrieval of those events and whether this was particularly important at event boundaries. Participants encoded and recalled two cartoon movies during fMRI scanning. Higher functional connectivity between the hippocampus and the posterior medial network (PMN) at an event's offset is related to the subsequent successful recall of that event. Furthermore, hippocampal-PMN offset connectivity also predicted the amount of detail retrieved after a 2-day delay. These data demonstrate that the relationship between memory encoding and hippocampal-neocortical interaction is dynamic and biased toward boundaries.

Coping in the Face of Violence – a Qualitative Study on the Impacts of Stressful Life Events on the Mental Health of Older Adults in Colombia

ABSTRACT Background Many older adults in Colombia have lived through violent and stressful life events, particularly in areas of poverty. The aim of this qualitative study was to understand the impact of stressful life events on the mental health and wellbeing of older Colombians living in areas of relative poverty. Methods Older adults (aged 60+) living in the Turbo region in Colombia were interviewed face-to-face between August and December 2021. Transcripts were coded in Spanish and English by at least two researchers, using inductive thematic analysis. Results Twenty-six older adults participated in the study. Four overarching themes were generated: Living in violent and dangerous communities; Disturbing gender violence and gender roles; Lack of mental health awareness; Coping mechanisms. Older adults experienced a long narrative of stressful life events. Younger generations appeared to disrespect older members of Society. Without any mental health support, older adults coped by accepting the extreme situations or seeking solace in their faith. Conclusions The health system and Government need to build up trust and generate an awareness of mental health, as older Colombians will not approach psychological support otherwise. Intergenerational community-based interventions may provide a first avenue of mental health support.