Narrative Turn Research Articles

›Less Voice, more Viewpoint‹ – Towards a Cognitive Reconceptualization of the Centres of Orientation in Poetry

Abstract Analysing the centres of orientation in a literary text, narratologists since Genette have always worked with the distinction between voice (who speaks?) and viewpoint (who sees?). In contrast, nearly all lyricologists have remained entirely focussed on the category of voice, trying to identify, apart from the speaking voice, at best further speech instances in the poems under discussion. The present article challenges this voice-restricted tradition. It criticizes the deficiencies of various traditional one-voice-models (such as the identification of the speaking voice with the poet, a persona or the ›lyric I‹) as well as those of more recent voice-oriented approaches (by Hempfer and by Culler). It also discusses the blind spots of the multi-voice models developed in the course of lyricology’s ›narrative turn‹ (by Hühn and by Burdorf) and rejects Zymner’s recent suggestion to replace the notion of ›voice‹ by the purely textual concept of an ›addresser‹ as a ›structure of signs‹. Subsequently, the framework of an alternative, viewpoint-oriented lyricology is sketched by adopting from Cognitive Linguistics such key-concepts as viewpoint-multiplicity, mental spaces and deictic markers as well as from Cognitive Grammar the notions of ›viewing arrangement‹ and ›split conceptualiser‹. Further instruments that can help to account for those poems in which the centre of perception seems to unite in itself the viewpoints of different ›voices‹ are such concepts as ›viewpoint-blends‹ and ›viewpoint-zooms‹. More akin to cognition, in which there are no strict boundaries, but only transitions, they can help to overcome long-lasting, hardly successful attempts to establish rigid divisions in the lyric (e. g. between personal and impersonal, monologic and dialogic, biographical and non-biographical or lyric and narrative poems). Instead, the viewpoint-framework does justice to the fact that such binaries constitute no polar oppositions but mere scales of difference. Moreover, a viewpoint-approach makes possible a much more fine-grained analysis of poetry – in a way better even than an earlier attempt by Petzold (2012) to extend lyricology’s voice-centred methodology by integrating into it a Genette-inspired distinction of three types of focalization. The last section of this article is devoted to the complex problem of viewpoint-taking by the readers, which is aggravated by the underdetermined deixis and situational generality of many poems. As is finally illustrated by drawing on a poem with a particularly complicated deictic set-up (Eichendorff’s »Lockung« [»Lure«]), readers will admittedly not always be able to process all viewpoints contained in a text. Nevertheless, it can be shown with the help of this example that viewpoint-perception is often an indispensable prerequisite for a full understanding of a poem’s meaning.

Bringing the Global into Medical Sociology: Medicalization, Narrative, and Global Health.

Medical sociologists have much to gain by bringing in global health. In this article, I make the case for expanding our field by furthering sociological perspectives on global health. I reflect on my career, the influence of scholar-activist mentors, and my contributions to the development of scholarship about medicalization, narrative, and global health in medical sociology. First, I focus on medicalization, its relationship to biomedicalization and pharmaceuticalization, and critiques of the medicalization of global health. Second, I analyze the narrative turn in studies of illness experiences and the inclusion of visual materials as an integral part of narrative studies of illness. Third, I explore global health and show examples of bodies of knowledge that medical sociologists are building. Although I present each as a distinct area, my discussion illustrates how the three areas are intertwined and how my contributions to each traverse and build connections among them.

Политический нарратив: концепции, типологии и структуры

The article is devoted to the study of the narrative turn effects in humanitarian knowledge on the formation and development of the narrativity theory in relation to various types of discourse. The paper focuses on analytical and theoretical studies of the political narrative, its state of research, systematization of the concepts underlying its interpretations, and identification of the modern trends specifics in the development of political narrative. The authors managed to demonstrate the capacity of the narrative paradigm to describe the narrative nature of mentality and human activity through the prism of narrative in a socio-cultural context. Criteria have been established that make it possible to define a political narrative from the perspective of various interpretations. The theory of metanarrative is systematized and the stages of its transformation in the mirror of postmodernism and metamodern concepts are characterized. Five essential characteristics of the metanarrative are given: usefulness, ubiquity, invisibility, commitment, rigidity. The value component of metanarratives in the aspect of Russian and foreign cultures is represented by the example of basic concepts. The structure of ideologies and the family of ideologies as conceptual cluster formations are presented and described. The theories of the counternarrative are considered and the authors criteria for differentiating the alternative narrative and the counternarrative are put forward. The general structure of the narrative is demonstrated, taking into account narrative levels and narrative acts. The structure of the political narrative is described and the conditions for the successful implementation of the political narrative are identified, including the key elements of the political narrative: the main character, plot, setting, conflict, resolution. The most effective tools of the current manipulative strategy of political storytelling are analyzed – the tactics of spinning or “unwinding” the positive aspects of the message, and the techniques of using spin – cherry picking, gaslighting, non-denial denial and others. The grounds for distinguishing between fakes and factoids are presented. Classification parameters for the narrative analysis of political discourse are proposed.

Harmonious Coexistence: The Ecological Narrative Turn of Chinese Ethnic Minority-themed Animation in the New Century

Harmonious Coexistence: The Ecological Narrative Turn of Chinese Ethnic Minority-themed Animation in the New Century

Søndag efter søndag

This article explores the Aarhus theologian Johannes Sløk’s sermon guides, published in Præsteforeningens Blad in 1980 and 1982 respectively, in order to cast light on the question of continuity in Sløk’s thought and the ‘narrative turn’ in his authorship. The article consists of two parts: i) a diachronic reading and comparison of Sløk’s sermon guides vis-a-vis Sløk’s sermons from the 1940’s, to show how Sløk’s theology develops in this time span, and ii) a synchronic reading of the sermon guides, which points to three decisive theological topics in the sermon guides that are also constitutive for Sløk’s thought in general. Thus, the article consolidates the position in Sløk research that although a development and a ‘narrative turn’ does indeed take place in Sløk’s theology, this is not to be considered a break, but rather, a refinement.

Violence as a Game: The Narrative Turns in the Film Bacurau (2019)

Violence as a Game: The Narrative Turns in the Film Bacurau (2019)

Creativity — Narrativity — Fictionality: A Critical Genealogy

Abstract: The term “narrative” has become ubiquitous in public discourse, but to date little work has been done to explore how vitally it is related both historically and theoretically to another contemporary buzzword: creativity. By addressing this lacuna this essay seeks not only to illuminate the popularity of narrative as a mode of knowledge, but to shed new light on its relationship to another core concept in the field: fictionality. The essay argues that the narrative turn and the contemporary boom in instrumental storytelling have been facilitated by a lexical and semantic shift from narrative as artifact to narrative as process, and that this shift is the result of ongoing historical intersections with new secularized and democratized theories of creativity as a human faculty. By tracing this shift we can better understand the contested history of fictionality, particularly in relation to debates about the rise of the novel in the eighteenth century, and bring a new approach to the epistemological underpinings of the narrative turn in the academy and the subsequent popular appeal to personal storytelling in the networked public sphere.

Feeling Solitary in the Seductive Republic: Narrative Deviance in Elizabeth "Harriot" Wilson and William "Amos" Wilson

Abstract: This essay examines two prominent literary narratives and tropes at the turn of the nineteenth century that constellate around the seduction plot and the hermit narrative. These two ostensibly discrete narrative forms have a curious history as they play out in the printed iterations of the Elizabeth Wilson and William Wilson stories, two siblings whose lives were marked by differing forms of tragedy. By bringing together a tale of seduction, execution, and hermitic living, I show how the account of Elizabeth Wilson's execution for infanticide shifted from being a seduction plot to a frame tale for a hermit narrative about her brother. This narrative turn moves from an account that focuses on the policing of female sexuality to instead emphasize the curious life of a man who refuses social intercourse. But that shift actually signals something more complicated about how the early Republic sought to instill ways of feeling about gender and deviance.

NARRATIVE EXPLORATIONS OF CARE: THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF CAREGIVING IN THE CONTEXT OF MENTAL HEALTH AND CANCER

Abstract Embracing the “narrative turn,” we used the post-modern and feminist informed research methodologies of narrative inquiry alongside photo elicitation to co-create an in-depth cancer family caregiver narrative with a 50-year-old daughter who cared for her mother (age 80) affected by lifelong schizophrenia and recent metastatic breast cancer. The participant was invited to share personal photos to support her in co-creating a caregiver narrative within the narrative interview environment. While these photos were not analyzed for content, they prompted the participant to share stories about her private caring experiences and make meaning of them. The I-statements of these stories were then used to create a research poem which explores a life lived alongside a parent with mental health issues, while highlighting the transformation and healing potential that life-limiting cancer introduced to their complex relationship affected by mental health barriers. The I-Poem rendering was analyzed for cognitive and emotional meaning resonant of the human experience. Emergent thematic threads of personal humanistic values include altruism, love, and forgiveness. Additionally, this I-Poem analysis contributes to new knowledge situated in human story telling while capturing a transformational personal experience of caring as an exemplar which resists discrimination and disunity among older persons and their family caregivers on the basis of mental health with concomitant serious illness.

Spirituality and Narrative Identity: Three Case Studies

Since the narrative turn in the social sciences from the 1980s onward, there has been an increasing interest in the concept of narrative identity. The concept of narrative identity, however, is open to multiple interpretations. Here, we take a narrative hermeneutic approach and apply one particular model of narrative identity—to three case studies, exploring how each of these was shaped by the storyworlds of the participants. The case studies have been selected as examples of different forms of identity: received, bricolage, and guided. Following this exploration, we reflect on the potential of this approach in other areas of identity work and the implications for narrative understanding in the promotion of social justice.

Transmedial Creation of Text Worlds. Pictorial Narration in Response to Verbal Texts

Abstract With the narrative and visual turn engaging research in several scholarly disciplines over the last decades, the author of this article intends to approach the issue of world-formation in such pictorial representations that have originated in response to verbal texts, mostly literary. The study assumes a semiotic vantage point, with text understood broadly as any meaningful sequence or network of signs. It draws also from Intermedial Studies, following in particular the idea of media transformation (transmediation) as proposed by Lars Elleström (2014), especially in application to “qualified” media such as artistic forms. An analysis will be carried on the set of images (mostly Western paintings and one instance of Oriental sculpture) produced by 19th and 20th-century artists, all induced by well-known verbal narratives that represent three categories: a) Greek mythology, b) religious and literary-religious texts (The New Testament, the Rāmāyana) and c) English-language literature (drama and poetry). As such, these visual renditions — a reversal of traditionally conceived ekphrasis in which verbal descriptions commented on visual artefacts — qualify as transmedial phenomena. The author’s main concern is to what extent storytelling static visual works, the instances of secondary narrativity (Stampoulidis, 2019), are capable of creating text worlds (partly) similar to storyworlds postulated for verbal narratives. Starting with her own taxonomy of picturing endowed with a narratorial potential (inspired by several typologies proposed for narrative images), the author will discuss the formation by pictorial means of two world-building units, namely: 1) scenes and 2) small worlds/sub-worlds, both of them only parts of full-blown text worlds. Temporality emerges as a foundational but not exclusive property of text worlds in the verbal and pictorial arts. This study is a continuation of the author’s previous research (Chrzanowska-Kluczewska, 2009, 2016, 2019) that points to an incremental growth of possible worlds into text worlds into discourse worlds in verbal and visual media.

Whither epistemic decolonisation? How to make experiences a source of moral justification

ABSTRACT This paper examines the narrative turn in decolonial theory, specifically regarding the use of experience as sources for normative theories. While narratives of experience can challenge claims of universality, they alone cannot provide broader normative criteria that extend beyond specific experiences, making their use as moral justification ambiguous. Before seeking criteria for moral justification, it is essential to examine the epistemic contribution of experience-based discourse, such as standpoint theories and the Brazilian concept of “lugar de fala” (place of speech). Instead of relying solely on experience, the paper argues for an epistemic critique of the socially shared vocabulary that precedes these experiences. The paper proposes that a more productive approach lies in identifying blind spots in our concept of injustice and examining the vocabulary that shapes our disposition to feel and narrate experiences. This critique challenges the limitations of relying solely on identity for moral justification, emphasising the importance of collective understanding and the need for a broader framework. By expanding this vocabulary, alternative ways of being affected and describing forms of life can be explored.

A váratlan vendég

Can a reversal be something that we do not expect? In other words: can we recognise something as a twist if we have no prior expectations about the course of the plot, the characters, the dynamics of the development and resolution of conflicts? Yet if we do have a prior expectation, how can we even talk about a twist? In this paper, I would like to explore this paradoxical nature of the turn within the narrative plot, and in doing so, I would also like to examine to what extent the existence and designation of the narrative turn may depend on the interpreter’s activity, what its status is in our everyday, practical narratives when we „predict” with the help of our narrative interpretive competence, and to what extent it is a relevant aspect when we talk about fictional narratives.

What makes strategic narrative efficient: Ukraine on Russian e-news platforms

Contributing to the ‘narrative turn’ in International Relations and offering an answer to the question ‘What makes a strategic narrative efficient?’, this article adds to the methodological theorization of the formation and projection phases of the narrative’s lifecycle. We suggest that the impact of the constructed image in the narrative can be reinforced by the interplay of at least three projection properties: (1) content accentuation and priming, through iterations; (2) content contextualization, through historical and cultural resonance with the consumers’ memories; and (3) content verbalization, through narrative tactics that evoke a range of the consumers’ involved attitudes to the framed image. These properties, being intrinsic ingredients of the projected content, tend to enhance emotions. In our work, they get traction in the antagonistic narrative tailored by the Russian propaganda to depict Ukraine orientated towards the European Union (EU). The empirical case study analyses articles published on the Russian e-news platforms portraying the EU granting Ukrainians visa-free travel to the Schengen area in 2017, a milestone in Ukraine–EU relations. We define Russia’s narrative, created in reaction to this event, as antagonistic and consider it to be a precursor of the aggressive narrative crafted/employed by Russia to justify its 2022 military assault on Ukraine’s sovereignty.

Putting Politics Aside: The Congressional Baseball Game

Putting Politics AsideThe Congressional Baseball Game Dylan Garvin (bio) and Rick Burton (bio) overview For many Americans, watching representatives from the two major US political parties locked in fierce political battles is nothing new. And while legislative disagreements and challenges have traditionally taken place inside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, the two parties that have dominated American politics for more than 150 years have annually taken their combative spirit to nearby settings (most recently Washington Nationals Park) to settle their perceived and very real differences via competitive baseball. This contest, the Congressional Baseball Game (CBG) played between Democrats and Republicans in the nation’s capital, stands as an American cultural tradition unlike almost any other. Despite receiving limited national media coverage, this annual baseball event serves as a symbolic strand in America’s foundational and social DNA. From a historical standpoint, the Congressional Baseball Game started as a friendly competition between the two opposing parties. It has since grown into a significant public fundraising event raising millions of dollars for various charitable causes. It has also enjoyed visitations from sitting American presidents, including Woodrow Wilson, the first to attend the game in 1917. Years later Dwight D. Eisenhower threw out the first pitch for the 1953 contest.1 The most recent presidential attendee was Joe Biden, who made a brief appearance during the 2021 game.2 The CBG has also showcased three future presidents. Both the thirty- eighth president, Gerald Ford, and forty- first, George H. W. Bush, played for the Republican team during their time in the House of Representatives. Ford is credited with hitting the first recorded grand slam in the game’s history in 1957.3 Bush, who captained Yale’s baseball team during his time in New Haven, Connecticut, was a mainstay in the Republicans’ infield during his two terms [End Page 89] in Congress (1967–71).4 The third future president to play in the game, Joe Biden, is the only Democratic president to do so. Biden made three appearances during his time in the Senate and during the 1974 matchup wore a Philadelphia Phillies uniform, which he described as having been “stolen” from the team. The uniform happened to be the number forty- six, the same number as his future presidency.5 Interestingly, since its inception more than 112 years ago, the game has built a distinct political legacy filled with numerous narrative twists and turns, perhaps befitting of a game that has often been described as America’s national pastime. The game has also featured former professional baseball players, including a National Baseball Hall of Fame member, widely celebrated as one of the greatest major league pitchers ever. But of all the politicians to ever play the game, the best player ever to compete in the congressional game (by a wide margin) never played past the inter-collegiate (NCAA) level. the father of the game The first game between congressional Democrats and Republicans took place in 1909. This initial contest was organized by John Tener, a first-year congressman from Pennsylvania and former Major League Baseball (MLB) player. The event was designed as a change of pace for the lawmakers, who were used to contesting legislation within the walls of the Capitol, but as the proposed game date drew closer, members became more excited.6 At the price of seventy-five cents per ticket, more than one thousand attendees filed into Washington’s American League Park to watch something far removed from an elite baseball game. In staging the game, however, the modestly talented politicians could suggest their patriotism (by playing America’s symbolic game) but also show a “down- home” linkage to their constituencies (by rolling up their figurative sleeves and taking turns in the batter’s box). This first game ended after a full seven innings with the Democrats’ 26– 16 victory. The Associated Press summed the game up by claiming, “More varieties of baseball were played in that game than [were] ever crowded into seven innings before.”7 The game included fourteen errors in total, nine by the Republicans. The Washington Times (which was published between 1894 and 1939 and should not be confused with the contemporary conservative...

A Tale of Two Theories

A Tale of Two Theories

Business history and the ‘practical turn’

ABSTRACT In addressing the urgent need for business historians to think about enhancing their relationships with practitioners, we advocate what we term a 'Practical Turn' (as opposed to a 'historic turn' or a 'narrative turn', as proposed by other scholars). Although not entirely original, this 'Practical Turn' is essential if the discipline is to gain greater credibility, especially in management and business schools where most business historians reside. The article addresses some of the challenges faced by business historians, providing evidence to demonstrate that the discipline has much to offer the various worlds of practice.

Нарратив и нарративность в «Лирической сюите» Альбана Берга

The article is devoted to Alban Berg’s "Lyric Suite", which has been the object of hermeneutical analysis for half a century as a classic example of instrumental music with a hidden program. "The narrative turn" in musicology in recent years has brought to life another interpretation of this work, aimed at revealing the principles of narrative in it. This becomes the task of this article. The arsenal of sources accumulated to date allows us to interpret the Suite as a system of subtexts, not only musical, but also verbal. The narrative structure includes: the author (he is also the hero), characters, plot, several explicit and hidden addressees, events happening in a certain place and at a certain time, a clearly expressed author’s point of view, which is revealed by quoting from three works about love: "Lyric Symphony" by A. Zemlinsky, "Tristan and Isolde" by R. Wagner and "De profundis clamavi" by Ch. Baudelaire. A love story that does not have a happy ending unfolds in several planes: real, mystical and mythological. Expanding the concept of narrativity, it is possible to point out other narrative properties of aesthetic and compositional-technical kind in the Suite: a romantic narrative associated with the relationship of words and music; the narrative of cinema, referring to the present; the narrative of dodecaphony as an individual interpretation of A. Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method of composition.

ПОКАЗЫВАТЬ VS РАССКАЗЫВАТЬ: В ПОИСКАХ ОПРЕДЕЛЕНИЯ ВИЗУАЛЬНОГО НАРРАТИВА

After the narrative turn and blurring of the boundaries of narratology, after the shift from classical scientific paradigm, based on formalism and structuralism, to post-classical one, closely related to interdisciplinarity, the issues of terminology and methodology became an important part of debates, visual studies included. That important shift influenced not only the scientific framework for new researches, but also the theoretical principles. The notion of “visual narrative” emerged at the intersection of interest in the field of the visual and narrative, and it can be fully called the result of the interdisciplinarity development. In Western European literature there are two main terms that connect the narration with the sphere of images – these are pictorial and visual narrative. Both belong to the postclassical period of development of narratology. The article deals with the key concepts and significant authors (V. Tyupa, M. Bal, W. Schmid, W. Wolf, W. Steiner) whose works address the very possibility of visual narration in fine Arts, its most significant characteristics, the boundaries between the text and image; attempts have been made to define the essence and borders of visual narrative

From Poverty Relief to Rural Revitalization: Narrative Turn and Practical Path of the Three Rural Reports

From Poverty Relief to Rural Revitalization: Narrative Turn and Practical Path of the Three Rural Reports