Narratological Methods Research Articles

The impact of soft law on the regulation of sustainable investment in the Arctic Region

The article discusses the issue of regulating sustainable and responsible investment in the Arctic region. The execution of large-scale investment initiatives in this region will require substantial capital, including foreign ones, as well as a large-scale impact on the ecology of the Arctic region. The work emphasizes the importance of making sustainable investments, which in the long term will not harm either the environment or indigenous and small-numbered peoples living in the project areas. The purpose of the work is to study how soft law instruments affect the regulation of investment in the Arctic using narratological methods. Currently, there is a clear lack of international legal regulation of sustainable investment, and the legislation of different states on relevant issues follows different approaches. When investment relations are not properly regulated, it can be difficult to implement sustainable and responsible investment, which will also have negative economic consequences. In this regard, the author concludes that currently the norms of the so-called ?soft law? play the most important role in regulating investment activities. An analysis of so-called ESG investing is being carried out. The work presents an overview of some of the most significant sources of soft law and classifies soft law norms depending on their source of origin. Explanatory examples demonstrate how investors and enterprises implementing investment projects apply soft law in their activities. The author concludes that the concept of soft law is a reflection of the way in which entrepreneurs' narratives can influence the behavior patterns that will be adopted by the relevant association of entrepreneurs. The article gives examples to examine the impact of narratives on the creating and implementation of soft law provisions, and further analyzes these methods of influence.

Autobiographical tendencies in Boris Ryzhy’s works. The Rotterdam Diary [Rotterdamskiy dnevnik

The article analyzes the autobiographical features of The Rotterdam Diary [Rotterdamskiy dnevnik], the only prose work by the late poet B. Ryzhy, a native of Yekaterinburg. The Diary was written soon after his trip to the Poetry International Festival in the Netherlands in 2000 and can be viewed as the young poet’s confessions that shed light on the logic of his life and work. The book remained unfinished at the time of Ryzhy’s death — his widow and father came up with the title and initiated a posthumous publication in the Znamya journal. The book’s unique quality lies in its tentative genre attribution as well as significant fragmentation of the narrative. Using narratological methods, the article demonstrates the narrator’s use of a nonlinear narrative to put together his own image — that of a loner, a ‘loser,’ and, at the same time, ‘an ordinary Russian poet.’ Interestingly, this image is partially reflected in the poet’s contemporaries also portrayed in the Diary and helps to form an opinion about the lyrical hero from the viewpoint of his typological traits.

Searching for the Lost Tree of Life: An analysis of the Self-identity Process of the Heroine Joe in The NymphomaniacVol with Conceptual Metaphor Theory

people have been suffering from extreme loneliness, especially women, are more likely to feel lonely. For various reasons, modern women can't honestly express their sexual desires and needs, which makes it more difficult for them to realize self-identity. Lars von Trier shows a woman who challenges tradition and seeks her own identity from the perspective of feminism. How the heroine "Joe" in this film realizes her identity, her experience is very special, and it is worth exploring in depth, but relevant research is very scarce. Therefore, this paper uses the methods of narratology and conceptual metaphor to deeply analyze the women in the film. This paper uses the methods of video data and literature data, combined with narratology and conceptual metaphor, to analyze the film and its related literature. From a practical point of view, it provides a reference for women's identity positioning in real life, and deeply understands women's personal aspirations.

Fictions of the Mind: A Psychoanalytical and Cognitive Narratological Analysis of Mediacy in D.H. Lawrence’s <i>The Fox</i>

As its main goal, this study seeks to contribute to the analysis of narrative discourse by investigating the strategies and devices provided by modern prose fictions like D.H. Lawrence’s The Fox for constructing/representing fictional minds or the consciousness of fictional characters in narrative texts. The paper is structured in two sections. Drawing from the insights of both Classical and Poststructuralist narratology, the theoretical section of this paper brings together narratological theories, methods, concepts and devices for representing textual minds and consciousness: psychonarration, free indirect discourse (narrated monologue), interior monologue, stream of consciousness, focalization, reflectorization, cognitive methods, and devices of mental states. The second is the analytical section which constitutes a practical demonstration of how the above narratological methods, concepts and devices can fulfill descriptive, interpretive and analytical functions with respect to the question of how fictional minds and consciousness are represented or manifested in modern narratives. On the whole, the paper attempts to answer the question, which narratological categories and methods are relevant for the analysis of mind-related aspects of narrative discourse? For illustrative purposes, D. H. Lawrence’s The Fox is used as staging grounds.

A Study on the Path of Narrative Renewal of Traditional Villages: A Case of Shawan Ancient Town, Guangdong, China.

Traditional villages are a valuable for their historical and cultural heritage, and have long been the focus of academic research regarding their protection and renewal methods in the face of increasing urbanization. In the village renewal model, the continuation and regeneration of cultural context is the core issue. This paper aims to construct the updated narrative text of Shawan Ancient Town on the basis of narrative rules and methods, while also exploring how to generate the conservation and renewal strategies based on the narrative text. Drawing on the concepts and methods of narratology and based on the cultural background and current conditions of Shawan Ancient Town's architectural heritage, this paper takes "narrative in terms of theme, clue, path, and material" as the basic framework to construct the narrative text in the context of traditional village renewal. Then four aspects, such as "base combing, interface integration, patch symbiosis, and debris collection", are used to update the methods of the spatial situation of individual places. Additionally, multiple construction forms are explained, generating a historic, interesting, and experiential strategy for the protection and renewal of ancient towns. This study demonstrates logical thinking from the construction of narrative text to the generation of renewal strategies from a narrative perspective while deepening the typical research on the traditional village narrative renewal mode. It is advantageous to build a protection mechanism for historical and cultural villages, and explore a path to protect, inherit, and promote the cultural heritage of villages based on China's current situation.

The ‘Great Whore’ of Babylon (Rev 17) as a Non-Survivor of Sexual Abuse

The article aims to re-read Rev 17:16 amid the catastrophic patterns of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Employing narratological methods as well as a close reading of the text, it is argued that Rev 17:16 can be coherently read as the violent sexual punishment of an anthropomorphic female character. Signals in the text point to God’s involvement in this punishment and to its overall positive evaluation. Considering reader’s realities in the context of sexual abuse and its cover-up, the article argues for the necessity of taking a positional stance while reading biblical ‘texts of sexual terror’. Such a positional stance must have visible effects on a responsible reading and interpretation of the ‘great whore’s’ story.

In Modernist “School for Fools”: The Topics of Writing and Apprenticeship in German and Russian Fiction of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century

The article suggests a comparative analysis of the modernist writing and apprenticeship topics in German and Russian fiction of the twentieth and twenty-first century. Writing is considered to be calligraphy, a writer’s craft, the character’s existence as a scriptor, a form of escapism, a (neo)mythological ritual of destruction and renewal of language and the world. Apprenticeship is explored in its connection with rhetorical culture of imitation and forms of rebellion against it, be it rebellion against the bourgeois society (R. Walser, H. Hesse, T. Bernhard) or the Soviet school and Social Realism (S. Sokolov, M. Shishkin). The literary tradition serves here as an object of imitation and/or deconstruction. This ambivalent attitude takes the form of irony, buffoonery, foolishness, schizophrenia and is rather often represented in the doppelganger motif. The study uses cultural-historical, comparative, narratological methods, leitmotif analysis, etc. The authors identifies new typological links between German and Russian literature.

An Analysis of Pride and Prejudice from Structuralist Perspective

Pride and Prejudice is a classic novel from Jane Austen, a prominent female British writer, which has attracted considerable attention from the perspective of language, content, feminism, and marriage view but without the plot organization. Different from the previous study, this paper aims at the plot organization of the novel to see its structure and the deep meaning.
 
 This paper is devoted to analyzing the novel from the surface and deep structure, in which the structuralist approach is employed. The surface and deep structure theory is the main clue; besides, the structuralist narratological methods are applied to analyze the cases in the novel and explore the surface structure and deep structure respectively. The concepts of surface and deep structure and the structuralist narratological methods were applied to analyze Pride and Prejudice to see how the plots act to serve for the theme.
 
 The paper shows that the achievement of a novel is closely related to its complement of the structure. The clear hierarchies can effectively elaborate the story and the theme. To divide the plot into several parts can easily control and handle the development and interaction of the plots. The relative and oppositional relations of the different plots contribute to the demonstration of the theme and the comprehension of the readers.

La forma de la falacia. Una relectura del tópico de la cetrería en la novela Nocturno de Chile de Roberto Bolaño

The form of fallacy. A rereading of the falconry motif in Roberto Bolaño’s Nocturno de ChileThe aim of the article is a rereading of the falconry motif in Roberto Bolaño’s novel Nocturno de Chile, based on an analysis of the critical reception existing so far. The study combines the traditional methods of narratology with a close-reading-orientated approach on the textual, narrative and intertextual level. As a result, the formal aspect of the novel, based on the techniques of incongruity and indetermination, is seen as a narrative tool to discredit the fallacies of the narrator’s monologue. By positioning the allegoric and symbolic readings of the motif in the context of the narrative technique, it seems that the main focus of the novel is a deconstruction of the testimonial mode of enunciation and, as a consequence, a critical revaluation of the actual debate on the history and memory in Chile and Latin America.

Neuroscience, Narrative, and Narratology

Cognitive narratology needs a neuroscientifically sound understanding of language. This essay lays out a neurobiological model of narrative that explains how stories arise from and set in motion fundamental neuronal and cortical processes, and it then asks how the aims and methods of narratology should be aligned with what we know about language and the brain. The formalist goal of identifying orderly, universal structures of mind, language, and narrative does not match up well with the probabilistic, reciprocal interactions in the brain through which cognitive patterns emerge from our embodied experiences of the world. Cognitive narratology needs to break with the structuralist legacy still evident in the terminology of frames, scripts, and preference rules and to embrace the paradigm shift proposed by various pragmatically oriented, phenomenological theories of narrative that have contested the formalist program.

Narrative structure in the mind: Translating Genette’s narrative discourse theory into a cognitive system

An episodic memory is considered to be mentally encoded or constructed information instead of a copy of the past events. However, the mechanism that constructs episodic memory has not been systematically formulated in previous studies on cognitive architecture and system. In this study, the term “story” is used, rather than episodic memory, to refer to a mental representation of temporally and linguistically organized events and entities. The main difference between a story and an episodic memory is that a story involves a form of mental representation, while the definition of an episodic memory is generally based on the function or content (i.e., it enables the recollection of past events). A story is considered as a uniform mental representation involving episodic memory, current situation, prospective memory, planned or imagined future, and fiction. To ensure systematic formulation of the story-form memory construction, this study introduces Genette’s narrative discourse theory, which is a representative work in narratology. Genette provided a systematic classification of terms used to describe a narrative structure, with particular focus on how a narrative is structured on a text instead of what is told. In this study, Genette’s narratological terms are analogically translated to methods of story-form memory construction in a cognitive system. Furthermore, the narratological methods are rearranged using cognitive terms including temporal segmentation of the world, generalization of stories, theory of mind, metacognition, self-formation, memory organization, and sociocultural aspect of cognition. Thus, a story is characterized as integrative, multifaceted, and multifunctional information in the mind.

Ficción autográfica y autografía ficcional: La busca del jardín y Ce que la nuit raconte au jour de Héctor Bianciotti

This article compares two autobiographical works of the French-Argentinian writer, Hector Bianciotti: La busca del jardin (1977), written in Spanish, and Ce que la nuit raconte au jour (1992), published in French. Narratological methods are used in order to analyze the relationship between the author, the narrator and the character and the spatio-temporal structure of the texts. The Spanish story is written in third person in the form of a dictionary and tends to metaphorization. The French work is told in first person with a more important temporal and spatial coherence. Their comparison demonstrates that the change of language between the writing of the two books could provoke different autofigurations and mean in a certain way for Bianciotti finding himself in the language of adoption.

‘As If There Was No Fear’: Exploring Nostalgic Narrative in Bo Carpelan’s Novel Berg

This article addresses nostalgic experience and aims at a definition of nostalgic narrative through textual analysis. The target text is Bo Carpelan’s Berg (2005). The novel is analysed with narratological methods focusing on the narrative modes and the techniques of narrative mediation that invite a nostalgic experience in the reader. This side of the phenomenon—the textual aesthetics of nostalgia—has been explored by few scholars, whereas the contextual and cultural aspects of nostalgia have received a lot of attention. This article suggests further ways of analysing how a text evokes nostalgic experience, and thus considers the nostalgic experience of the reader as the definitive core of nostalgic narrative. The nostalgic experience in Berg is intense, reflective, and ambivalent. These qualities are produced on the level of both the narrative discourse and the story: by changes between the narrative modes and by the nostalgic and non-nostalgic content that builds and breaks the idealised narrative. The article suggests that more attention should be paid to the complexity of nostalgic narratives. Furthermore, it highlights that by creating reflectivity and contradictions, the non-nostalgic content also affects the nostalgic narrative.

When not to tell stories: Unnatural narrative in applied narratology

AbstractInterest in literary fiction and literary theory from other academic fields and professional practices of storytelling has often been limited to what we could call an Aristotelian narrative approach, with its emphasis on coherence and closure. In this paper, I critically assess interdisciplinary applications of narratological theory as being too limited. After all, literature also offers an alternative narrative tradition, that of, anti-mimetic or ‘unnatural’ narratives. This tradition could enrich what is referred to in this paper as ‘applied narratology’: the transfer of narratological methods and findings to professional practices of narrative. When faced with the confusion of border experiences (Bühler), the institutionalised exclusion of otherness or traumatic experiences, we can greatly benefit from unnatural narrative, which exemplifies how coherence and closure can become oppressive. I also explore the example ofThe Long Awaited, a novel by Dutch-Moroccan author Abdelkader Benali, which together withThe Tin Drumby Günter Grass andMidnight’s Childrenby Salman Rushdie forms the minor literary tradition of ‘the tragic picaro’, a specific type of unnatural narrative. It is argued that such literary narrative experiments may offer interesting models for interdisciplinary applications of narratological theory.

The Great War in Lithuanian Literature and Memoirs

Works of fiction and memoirs relating to the First World War written in the Lithuanian languageor by Lithuanian authors have so far not been a preoccupation of Lithuanian literary scholars.Due to the breadth of the topic, the analysis in this article is limited to the most importantworks of fiction and witnesses’ memories of the Great War. The first fictional and documentaryworks analysed in the article were written during the war itself, the last at the beginning of theSecond World War. There is quite a large and very varied (from the point of view of artisticquality) amount of this kind of literature. Using methods of narratology and comparison, theauthor sets out to analyse the main themes, plots and possible influences, while placing thewritings in the history of Lithuanian literature. Key words: First World War, Lithuanian literature, military fiction, war memoirs.

\u2018Working is out of the question\u2019: a qualitative text analysis of medical certificates of disability

BackgroundMedical certificates influence the distribution of economic benefits in welfare states; however, the qualitative aspects of these texts remain largely unexplored. The present study is the first systematic investigation done of these texts. Our aim was to investigate how GPs select and mediate information about their patients’ health and how they support their conclusions about illness, functioning and fitness for work in medical certificates.MethodsWe performed a textual analysis of thirty-three medical certificates produced by general practitioners (GP) in Norway at the request of the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV).The certificates were subjected to critical reading using the combined analytic methods of narratology and linguistics.ResultsSome of the medical information was unclear, ambiguous, and possibly misleading. Evaluations of functioning related to illness were scarce or absent, regardless of diagnosis, and, hence, the basis of working incapacity was unclear. Voices in the text frequently conflated, obscuring the source of speaker. In some documents, the expert’s subtle use of language implied doubts about the claimant’s credibility, but explicit advocacy also occurred. GPs show little insight into their patients’ working lives, but rather than express uncertainty and incompetence, they may resort to making too absolute and too general statements about patients’ working capacity, and fail to report thorough assessments.ConclusionsA number of the texts in our material may not function as sufficient or reliable sources for making decisions regarding social benefits. Certificates as these may be deficient for several reasons, and textual incompetence may be one of them. Physicians in Norway receive no systematic training in professional writing. High-quality medical certificates, we believe, might be economical in the long term: it might increase the efficiency with which NAV processes cases and save costs by eliminating the need for unnecessary and expensive specialist reports. Moreover, correct and coherent medical certificates can strengthen legal protection for claimants. Eventually, reducing advocacy in these documents may contribute to a fairer evaluation of whether claimants are eligible for disability benefits or not. Therefore, we believe that professional writing skills should be validated as an important part of medical practice and should be integrated in medical schools and in further education as a discipline in its own right, preferably involving humanities professors.

Mondi narrativi e storie future. Modelli di espansione seriale tra pulp magazine e franchise transmediali

The forms of modular and transmedia seriality developed in recent years, such as the new TV series or the transmedia franchises, have made central both in the scientific debate about the media and in the mechanisms of media production concepts such as fictional worlds and worldbuilding”. A real aesthetics of worldness connecting movies, television, literature and videogames is emerging.Using historical, semiotic and narratological methods, my paper aims at highlighting how this kind of seriality, based on the sharing of narrative worlds, is not a new phenomenon. Like other serial mechanisms, we can retrace the origins in the narrative practices of pulp magazines of the first half of the XXth century. In the second part of the paper I will focus on a particular model of serial construction, the so-called future histories, that made its first appearance during the 1940s and is at the basis of the narrative expansion of science fiction transmedia franchises today.

Figurenanalyse im Johannesevangelium

Abstract: The many individuals appearing in the Fourth Gospel can only be traced back to historical figures to a limited extent, if at all. This is lamentable only to those who unilaterally link the truth of the gospel to history. The following contribution reveals how narratological methods allow characters to be analyzed and interpreted with contemporary theological relevance. The first section offers an overview of recent scholarship on character ana lysis, and the second section presents the characters of the Fourth Gospel along the heuristic lines of major, minor, and walk-on-characters. In the third section, select examples provide opportunities for considering: character traits and direct/indirect presentation with the characterization of Jesus in John 4; the constellation of characters through the presentation of the siblings Mary, Martha, and Lazarus; and finally, a summary of the character conception of John (the Baptist) in the Fourth Gospel.

History, a Literary Artifact? The Traveling Concept of Narrative in/on Historiographic Discourse

History, a Literary Artifact? The Traveling Concept of Narrative in/on Historiographic Discourse

Paradoxer Gewinn: Raumpoetik und utopische Anschaulichkeit in Ulrichs von Etzenbach ‚Alexander‘-Anhang

The article discusses some opportunities and challenges of medieval utopian studies, taking the late 13th century ‘Alexander’ appendix by Ulrich von Etzenbach as its main example, but also commenting on other heterotopic or utopian passages in the medieval German Alexander tradition (Gymnosophists, Flower Maidens, and the Earthly Paradise) as well in Gottfried von Straßburg’s ‘Tristan and Isolde’. The centrepiece of the article is a reading of the ‘Alexander’ appendix, which designs a free republic of scholars and black magicians that bears certain utopian features: Elements of an ‘other’ system of government are combined with elements of an ‘other’ system of education, creating a chimera of an urban ordering of society that has at its disposal means to pull itself away, to be utopian and to exist freely in collective selfdetermination and self-rule. The article closes with a number of conclusions regarding the methodology of medieval utopian studies, which would especially benefit from including narratological methods.