Narrative Phenomenon Research Articles

Dangers of Narrative: A Critical Approach to Narratives of Personal Experience in Contemporary Story Economy

The current storytelling boom across various spheres of life encourages actors from individuals to businesses and institutions to instrumentalize stories of personal experience, but the search for a "compelling story" is often blind to the possible downsides of experientially and emotionally engaging narratives. This article presents key findings of the project Dangers of Narrative that has crowdsourced examples of instrumental storytelling via Facebook and Twitter. We focus on three cases of political storytelling on social media, which foreground certain problems of using narrative in the public sphere: Donald Trump's anecdote about "Jim who stopped going to Paris"; a viral Facebook story by a Finnish MP about an encounter with a drug addict; and the social media controversy around the alleged confrontation between Covington High School students and Indigenous Peoples March attendants at the Lincoln Memorial in January 2019. Based on the idea in cognitive narratology of the experiential narrative as prototypical and on Caroline Levine's influential theory of colliding representational and social forms, we formulate a theory of how viral, affective storytelling may distort the intended rhetoric and ethics of narrative. We demonstrate how the prototypical narrative form, in collision with the formal affordances of social media, ends up contradicting the political or social forms that the teller or sharer of the narrative advocates. We describe the social media logic that creates a chain reaction from narrative experientiality to disproportionate and uncontrolled representativeness and normativity created by affective sharing, and we conceptualize this contemporary narrative phenomenon as the "viral exemplum."

Introduction: Chaucerian Resonances in Early Modern Drama, Shakespeare and Beyond

Introduction: Chaucerian Resonances in Early Modern Drama, Shakespeare and Beyond Lindsay Ann Reid (bio) and Rachel Stenner (bio) This special issue is dedicated to Chaucerian resonances in early modern drama. It is therefore useful to begin by posing the question: what is Chaucerian resonance? In a work of 1987, Alcuin Blamires offered one possible answer. Drawing on the definition of resonance as the “reinforcement or prolongation of sound by synchronous vibration,” he used this term to describe how Geoffrey Chaucer imbued “narrative with harmonies and discords so as to build imaginatively vibrant structures from the simplest of inherited stories.”1 For Blamires, resonance captured not only “the spoken, oral dimension of [Chaucer’s] art,” but also the “‘stereo’ effect . . . and enhancement of significance [he] created through . . . adroit echo[es].”2 As Blamires conceived it, Chaucerian resonance was an intratextual narrative phenomenon primarily manifesting as verbal repetition within Chaucer’s canon. It is fortuitous that Blamires fostered [End Page 127] no “intention of campaigning to found a critical School of Resonance” along these lines, however, for there was already a competing definition of Chaucerian resonance in circulation.3 An earlier piece authored by Judith H. Anderson and published in English Literary Renaissance in 1985 repeatedly employed the term resonance when connecting Edmund Spenser’s suggestive use of words, phrases, names, and even plots in The Faerie Queene and The Shepheardes Calender with the Middle English poetry of Chaucer. In Anderson’s formulation, Chaucerian resonance becomes synonymous with “Chaucerian flavor” and can be used, for example, to describe “distant echo[es]” (sometimes ironic or parodic) of Chaucer’s poetry in the works of others.4 It is, broadly speaking, an Andersonian stance on Chaucerian resonance that has most often been assumed by subsequent critics: this terminology has been used more or less exclusively to describe acts of Chaucerian reception by later artists.5 When identified as such, so-called Chaucerian resonances have often been linguistically grounded, focusing on later writers’ re-use of individual words or phrases memorably found in Chaucer’s canon.6 Yet the Chaucerian resonances identified in recent scholarship have not been strictly confined to verbal repetition. The language of resonance is sometimes deployed by critics seeking to convey those particular qualities—including formal features or thematic preoccupations—that mark a text as pseudo-Chaucerian.7 At other times, the term resonance has been used in a more figurative sense to imply the continued relevance or legibility of Chaucerian subjects and tropes in varied reception contexts.8 In 2019, more than thirty years after her first publication on Chaucerian resonance, Anderson returned to the topic and attempted to theorize resonance more explicitly in a chapter written for Rereading Chaucer and Spenser: Dan Geffrey with the New Poete. Noting that the term, somewhat paradoxically, “suggests degrees of presence” yet also “implies an experience that is affective, subtle, suggestive, and, probably for some readers, at times too elusive to accept,” she worked through instances of Chaucerian resonance in Spenser’s works.9 Anderson’s most recent examples are not limited to, or even primarily motivated by, instances of verbal similarity; indeed, she cautions that “we can sometimes miss echoes of Chaucer in Spenser simply because modernising—linguistic [End Page 128] translation—has occurred.”10 Perhaps the most valuable contribution of Anderson’s 2019 piece, however, is its characterization of Chaucerian resonance as a cumulative consequence of “clusters of recollection” across a text—a formulation not so far removed from Blamires’s “‘stereo’ effect,” though Anderson steers this concept well beyond the closed circuits of Chaucerian self-referentiality.11 And Anderson’s is not the only recent attempt to theorize the meanings of Chaucerian resonance. A 2019 piece by Helen Barr that appeared along with Anderson’s chapter in Rereading Chaucer and Spenser likewise makes a case that resonance is a helpful concept for interrogating the dynamics of Chaucerian reception. Chiefly interested in exploring Chaucerian resonance as an acoustic metaphor, Barr uses it—in ways that are distinct from but complementary to Anderson—to ask “how . . . we [might] account for hearing not one, but at least two (or more?) poets simultaneously.”12 Our own understanding of what constitutes Chaucerian resonance...

Teaching as narrative. The use of ELF in the IFL class in the migration setting of Southern Italy

This article illustrates the results of a three-year research project conducted in the migration setting of Southern Italy from 2015 to 2018 focused on: 1) theorising English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) as a “translingual practice” in migratory settings across the Mediterranean; 2) scrutinizing the possibility of a pedagogy of contact in the Italian as a Foreign Language (IFL) classroom; 3) highlighting issues of self-translation and reflexivity in teaching and learning practices in the migration setting. Considering teaching as a narrative phenomenon, the article explores the third phase of the project, which was based on a series of interviews with the IFL teachers, conducted in 2017–2018, aimed at highlighting such issues as the use of ELF as a co-learning language, of autobiographical elements and self-translation practice and of self-reflexivity and improvisation. Results show the extent to which approaching students, who are also beneficiaries in a national humanitarian project, required an effort to eliminate the ideal of linguistic purity, as well as all cultural and linguistic prejudices.

Official Historical Narrative of Russia as an Instrument of Aggression: Construction and Objectification

The subject of this study is the phenomenon of the official Russian historical narrative as a semantic pattern, which significantly determines the nature and direction of domestic and foreign policy of the state. The methods of actualism and historical reconstruction are used, whose synergetic combination of possibilities enables a complex vision of the purpose and meaning of constructing the corresponding narrative. Methods of political analysis, logistics, and forecasting allow us to reveal the peculiarities of the emergence and application of certain postulates of the narrative. The real existence of the historical narrative consists in its construction and objectification, power being the determinant and user of both components. The creation of the narrative takes place as apologetics of the desired and is determined by the self-seeking interests of the state, for which the mythologized image of the historical past is institutionalized. At the same time, the selectively dissected knowledge serves as an auxiliary material for substantiating the belief of the objects of influence in the expediency and necessity of the committed. Objectification is the process of achieving target settings, carried out using any means, including illegal ones. For Ukraine, this phenomenon turns into a constant aggressive encroachment on the seizure and appropriation of its specific historical and modern values: spiritual, territorial, and material ones. The incorporation of certain components of the Russian narrative into the mass consciousness of the Ukrainian society leads to the intensification of destructive processes in it, and therefore requires decisive nationwide opposition.

Metalepsis and/as Queer Desire: Queer Narratology and the 'Unnatural'

After tracing the connection between metalepsis, originally defined as a transgression of narrative levels, and the term ‘unnatural’ in various strands of narratology, this article argues that unnatural narratology, a postclassical approach specifically dedicated to non- or antimimetic narrative phenomena like metalepsis, follows what Eve Sedgwick calls paranoid inquiry. The perspective of queer narratology subsequently weighs in on discussions of ‘naturalness’ and ‘unnaturalness’ in a reparative effort: Metalepsis, as theorized in this paper, is expressive of the queer failure at being ‘natural’ and thus possesses a potential to articulate desires that are usually made invisible, inconceivable, or unintelligible by the normative framework and exclusionary rhetoric of narratology. Case studies of the video game What Remains of Edith Finch (2017) and the film musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) complement my theoretical deliberations and show that metalepsis can be more than ‘unnatural’ by affirming desires grounded in positive affects related to togetherness, belonging, and unity.

PENCIPTAAN NARASI PRODUK BUDAYA MASYARAKAT DESA PLUNTURAN KECAMATAN PULUNG KABUPATEN PONOROGO

ABSTRACT
 Narrative can grow and develop regardless of geographical background. Of the various definitions of narrative, most of them relate the two main characteristics of it, namely: 1) events, governed by temporality-chronology of events and their presentation in the text; 2) telling or making a story, as a verbal act of mediation. Narrative is used to accommodate the interests of society such as ideology, nationalism, social relations, cultural order. These aspects include natural aspects, geographical aspects, social aspects, cultural aspects, political aspects, historical aspects, philosophical aspects, anthropological aspects, economic aspects, language aspects, artistic aspects, mythological aspects, technological aspects. Research on the ethnographic aspects of the people of plunturan village seeks to reveal the problems formulated as follows; 1. How is the construction of cultural products built by the villagers of plunturan, pulung district, kab. Ponorogo. 2. How the narrative was created by the villagers of Plunturan Pulung, Ponorogo? The phenomenon of narrative, literary works, art works, and cultural products are entities that are interrelated with one another, this also occurs in the community of plunturan village. Ethnography is defined as a form of investigation that relies heavily on participant observation, at least researchers are in a marginal position, trying to document in detail, patterns of interaction, people's perspectives, and patterns of their daily understanding and manifest the imagination of the people of plunturan kec. Pulung kab ponorogo in narrative form.
 
 Keywords: ethnography, narrative, culture, local, interdisciplinary

Стоический нарратив: к вопросу о стратегиях изучения стоического наследия в западной философской мысли

The paper aims to analyse the phenomenon of Stoic narrative in the western philosophical thought. Considering narrative as a subtype of discourse, the author reveals correlation of the notions “Stoic narrative” and “Stoic wisdom” in the western philosophy. Relying on works of domestic and foreign specialists in Stoic philosophy, the researcher for the first time applies narrative methodology to identify the role of “Stoic wisdom” in culture, which constitutes scientific originality of the study. The findings indicate that Stoic narrative, being an integral component of the western philosophical thought, is an autonomous form of the Stoic doctrine cultural representation, along with Stoa and Stoicism. Interpreting Stoa Poikile (Painted Porch) heritage as narrative allows developing new methodology to study the place and role of Stoic conceptions in philosophy.

Variations in Viewpoint Presentation: The ‘Pear Story’ as Told by People with a Schizophrenia Diagnosis

In this study we explore linguistic viewpoint representation by language users diagnosed with schizophrenia, a heterogenic group theorized to diverge in the way they present, or choose, perspective in both language and cognition. We collected and analyzed retellings of the “Pear Story”, addressing the building of, and navigation between, separate but interconnected mental domains by focusing on the use of a broad range of linguistic and narrative phenomena: interactive framing, evaluations, story plot construction, causal connections, reference and speech and thought representations. The results point towards great complexities and varieties in viewpoint reports and navigation between subjects, thereby shedding light on perspective-taking abilities and possible difficulties in this group of people. These findings advance research into the diverse and complex ways in which viewpoint can be represented and navigated in stories, while gaining a better understanding of how cognitive and experiential viewpoint disturbances might be expressed in non-neurotypical populations.Publisher’s Note: This article was originally published with an incorrect peer review statement, which said that this article was an internally reviewed editorial. This has now been amended to reflect the fact that this is a piece of research that underwent double blind peer review by two external reviewers.

Hashtag narrative: Emergent storytelling and affective publics in the digital age

This article investigates the role that narrative plays in the emergence of cultural movements from the networked interactions of users with the algorithmic structures of social media platforms. It identifies and anatomizes a new narrative phenomenon created by the technological affordances of Twitter, a phenomenon dubbed ‘emergent storytelling’. In doing so, it seeks to explain: (a) the multiple concepts of narrative that operate at different levels of hashtag movements emerging from the dynamic forces that circulate in and through Twitter; (b) the interplay of narrative cognition with stochastic viral activity and the invisible design of social media algorithms; and (c) the varying rhetorical purposes that narrative is put to in public discourse about viral movements. Using #MeToo as a case study in the generation and reception of ‘affective publics’, it clarifies how iterative appeals to the experiential truth of individual stories manifest as narratable social movements in the networked public sphere.

Mystery fiction in culture: evolution of genre and crisis of cultural paradigm of modernity

The subject of this research is the phenomenon of mystery fiction and its evolution in the context of development of sociocultural project of modernity. The latter is viewed as a complex system, which fundamental principles permeate the entire fabrics of European culture, generating such phenomenon as a mystery fiction plot. The analysis of its varieties deepens the understanding of specificity of modernity and mature of crises that has captured it. Hermeneutic analysis allows going beyond the frames of the narrow-disciplinary analysis of the corresponding texts, allowing to determine the inevident layers within the phenomenon of narration of mystery fiction. The initial methodological point is presented by the concept of V. P. Rudnev, who identified interrelation between the mystery fiction storylines and dominant gnoseological paradigm. The author determines the four levels of narration of mystery fiction: ontological, gnoseological, anthropological, and ethical-normative. The classical (analytical) mystery fiction describes reality commensurable to human reason (ontological level), investigation appears as strict analysis (gnoseological level), detective resembles a “private thinker” who is distant from the society and the crime itself (anthropological level), and a crime is interpreted as a deviation that disturbs harmony of the rational order (ethical-normative level). In this sense, a classical mystery fiction is a reflection of metanarrative of modernity, aimed at building a complete system, and excluding the Other. At the same time, the crisis of the basis of modernity is essentially reflected in metamorphoses of mystery fiction genre. In existential and pragmatic mystery fiction, reality is irrational, and boundaries between the norm and deviation are being diluted. Such situation may be describes as disappointment in metanarrative – in underlines the inability of modern culture to adequately fulfill its fundamental functions. The Other strike roots in the cultural space; however, the space itself exists in accordance with the principles of postmodern anarchy.

Визуальные нарративы в коммуникативном пространстве массовой культуры

The article is devoted to visual narratives based on comics which form the values of mass culture. Comics are primarily a narrative medium. The subject of the study is the role of the formation of the values of mass culture. Particular attention is paid to the concept of visual narrative through comics and, in particular, its function in shaping the values of the subject of mass culture, because in modern culture, which is opposed to it through print and electronic media, the sense of reality is increasingly structured by narrative (narrative). The main research methods are sociocultural and historical approaches. They allow, based on the analysis of a vast amount of materials devoted to visual narratives and comics, including both foreign and domestic sources, to distinguish and interpret the main structure of the narrative: beginning, middle and ending. It is concluded that visual narratives affect society in key areas. Films tell stories about themselves and the world in which a person lives. Television appeals to society and offers reality in illusory forms. Printed products turn everyday life into history. Advertisements tell about the fantasies and desires of a modern person. The result of the study is the conclusion that visual narratives play a leading role in the formation of the values of mass culture, turning information and events into structures that are already significant for society. The novelty of the study is determined by the new facets of ideas about the phenomenon of visual narrative in the context of cultural knowledge.

Literatura in dialog z videoigrami na primeru romanov Puščava, Klet, Katakombe in Anastrofa

The paper explores two novels from the younger generation of Slovenian writers that implement narrative techniques and attributes specific to the video game medium. It places both novels in the broader context of intermediality between video games and literature, and illustrates their transmedial relationship through examples relevant to understanding the magnitude of the phenomenon. Anastrofa, a short novel by Muanis Sinanović, uses video game narrative techniques primarily for space-building within the narrative, whereas the novel-essay Puščava, klet, katakombe by Anja Radaljac enters the dialogue with the video game medium through a more convincing presentation of essayist discourse and a higher degree of reader interaction with the text. Due to the increasing frequency of intermedial transfer between video games and literature in the Slovenian space, the paper provides a pilot analysis of this contemporary narrative phenomenon.

Annotation Guideline No. 8: Annotation Guidelines for Narrative Levels

I first became aware of the SANTA project at the Digital Humanities conference in Montreal in the summer of 2017. I had just been assigned a 90-student secondyear undergraduate Digital Humanities undergraduate English Literature class, set to begin in January 2018, and I was looking for a group annotation project for my students. In previous iterations of the course, I had carried out several annotation projects focused on the narrative phenomenon of free indirect discourse (FID) in texts by Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. What made these projects successful, from my perspective, was that FID is a complex phenomenon (by definition, a passage in which it is difficult or impossible to say for certain whether a character or narrator is speaking certain words) which is however relatively easy to represent in machine language (for instance, with the TEI <said> element and a few value-attribute pairs). The challenge in the assignment, in other words, was literary rather than technical: while it was easy to learn the TEI tagging, it was hard to say for certain whether a passage from To the Lighthouse was in direct discourse or FID, or to identify who exactly was speaking. To my mind, this made the assignment a meaningful one for my students, teaching them a technical skill while also bringing them into closer contact with the sometimesirresolvable complexities of literary language.

Introduction to Narrative Phenomenon Model: A Framework for Mapping War Stories that Travel through Generations

This article relies upon cultural trauma theory for the basic understanding of storytelling in a post-traumatic situation and presents its findings based on researcher’s own observation of a post conflict situation of decade long armed conflict in Nepal. It introduces a communication model to explain the storytelling phenomenon that emerges during and after any violent situation and that exists through newer generations. First, the article discusses some theories related to trauma stories and sociology of generational differences. Second, it proposes Narrative Phenomenon Model as a new tool that can map the journey of trauma stories created by those exposed to war or violent events. Third, it discusses how narratives get created, modified or transformed into multiple truths.

Using Narratives in Training

The article discusses the possibility of using narrative in education. The authors investigate the appearance of the phenomenon of narrative, revealing its essence as the story of a person’s life, which he himself tells. Considerable attention is paid to the consideration of the concept of narrative in scientific works. The article addresses the issue of the possibility of using narrative techniques in family psychotherapy. The distinguishing features of the narrative and the possibilities of its use in pedagogical practice, in particular during lectures, are indicated. The aspects of the narration of the monological form of conducting classes are considered. The prospects of using narrative in higher education are emphasized.

Cultural Memory as a Narrative Phenomenon (Hermeneutic Aspects)

Cultural Memory as a Narrative Phenomenon (Hermeneutic Aspects)

Contemporary Drift: Genre, Historicism, and the Problem of the Present, by Theodore Martin; Minor Characters Have Their Day: Genre and the Contemporary Literary Marketplace, by Jeremy Rosen

Contemporary Drift: Genre, Historicism, and the Problem of the Present, by Theodore Martin; Minor Characters Have Their Day: Genre and the Contemporary Literary Marketplace, by Jeremy Rosen

Pedagogic Literary Narration in theory and action

The term Pedagogic Literary Narration conceptualises teaching around shared narrative prose in classrooms, conventionalised where teachers and students read a novel (or extracts) aloud over a series of lessons. Discussion theorises literary narration, representing through empirical research transcripts the interplay of multiple voices in classroom literary study and the constituent practices of a distinctive pedagogy. Methodology combines narratology, Narrative Analysis and Conversation Analysis. The article describes a narrative phenomenon without existing theorisation and explicates a core literary-pedagogic activity to develop teaching and its evaluation. Aligning qualitative methodology with educational connoisseurship, it extends theorisation of Narrative Analysis for education research.

Exploring Narrative Structure and Hero Enactment in Brand Stories.

This study examines how audiovisual brand stories both invite and enable consumers to enact heroic archetypes. Integrating research on the archetypal structure of narratives with research on the event structure of narratives, we distinguish singular plot stories (i.e., stories that show a Hero’s Journey) from embedded plot stories (i.e., stories that not only show but also tell one or more Hero’s Journeys) and develop a conceptual and narratological framework to analyze their structural elements. Application of the framework to 20 brand stories representing 8 different brands reveals meaningful variation in elements between the singular plot stories and embedded plot stories. Differences in the expression of archetypes and event structure are argued to evoke different types of Hero enactment which in turn result in different outcomes. We specifically hypothesize that the enactment of heroic archetypes in singular plot stories primarily results in catharsis (pleasure), whereas the enactment of heroic archetypes in embedded plot stories primarily results in an outcome we describe as phronesis: a form of moral sense making of the self that advances one’s practical wisdom and prudence. The final section of the paper discusses how cathartic and phronetic outcomes of hero enactment may foster the psychological bonding between brand and consumer, and invite consumers to align their moral values with the values that are reflected by heroic character traits. The central aims of the analysis presented are to provide an exploration of narrative phenomena in a reasonably broad range of brand story videos and foremost to provide a conceptual framework with an applicable instrument suited to analyze relevant categories in these brand stories. The present study is interdisciplinary in its approach to a contemporary, developing marketing phenomenon, applying psychological modeling of archetypes and heroic values with narratological insights on perspective-taking and story structure. Its contribution is to systemize, from a narratological viewpoint, how various narrative archetypes in brand video stories may contribute to the development of brand-consumer relations.

Investigación narrativa en didáctica de las Matemáticas: microrrelatos en torno al infinito

The aim of this article is to explain how the narrative research and the creation of short stories, using a physical experience, helped secondary school students (12 to 16 years old) to elaborate category answers while studying the actual infinity as a cardinal identity. The narrative investigation can be used, at least, with a triple sense: the phenomenon investigated (as a written or spoken result), the method of investigation (as a mean to construct or analyze the narrative phenomenon) and the use of narrative with different purposes (educational, reflection process, change, innovation improvement…). Therefore, narrative is a basic method of thinking, organizing the knowledge, and the reality where human experience is formulated through a short story. This new analysis procedure has allowed us to extract more information from these interviews since they had to be written in the form of short stories. Similarly, we have tried to innovate narrative research into the field of mathematic didactics. Our study favored the categorization of five different states, from less to more evolved.