Steven Belletto
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199826889
- eISBN:
- 9780199932382
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199826889.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
Chapter five describes a widespread cultural narrative that I term the game theory narrative, which does not name the technical understanding familiar to mathematicians or economists, but rather a ...
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Chapter five describes a widespread cultural narrative that I term the game theory narrative, which does not name the technical understanding familiar to mathematicians or economists, but rather a popularized story about what game theory could do for Americans playing a global game of Cold War. It was touted as a scientific theory that would help the United States win this game by incorporating random strategic moves in order both to outplay the Soviets and to manage the threat of an accidental nuclear exchange. The chapter describes how this story was promulgated in the early 1950s, then how it was engaged, amplified or challenged in a range of literary and cultural materials, including Philip K. Dick’s Solar Lottery (1955), Robert Coover’s The Universal Baseball Association (1968), Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964), Richard Powers’s Prisoner’s Dilemma (1988), and Joan Didion’s A Book of Common Prayer (1977), Democracy (1984) and The Last Thing He Wanted (1996). In such works, there is the sense that while game theory is the product of supreme rationality, when applied to the realities of the Cold War, it becomes supremely irrational, and the myth of state control is dangerously reminiscent of totalitarian fantasies of control.Less
Chapter five describes a widespread cultural narrative that I term the game theory narrative, which does not name the technical understanding familiar to mathematicians or economists, but rather a popularized story about what game theory could do for Americans playing a global game of Cold War. It was touted as a scientific theory that would help the United States win this game by incorporating random strategic moves in order both to outplay the Soviets and to manage the threat of an accidental nuclear exchange. The chapter describes how this story was promulgated in the early 1950s, then how it was engaged, amplified or challenged in a range of literary and cultural materials, including Philip K. Dick’s Solar Lottery (1955), Robert Coover’s The Universal Baseball Association (1968), Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964), Richard Powers’s Prisoner’s Dilemma (1988), and Joan Didion’s A Book of Common Prayer (1977), Democracy (1984) and The Last Thing He Wanted (1996). In such works, there is the sense that while game theory is the product of supreme rationality, when applied to the realities of the Cold War, it becomes supremely irrational, and the myth of state control is dangerously reminiscent of totalitarian fantasies of control.
Jeffrey Longhofer, Jerry Floersch, and Janet Hoy
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195398472
- eISBN:
- 9780199979325
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195398472.001.0001
- Subject:
- Social Work, Research and Evaluation
Qualitative methods have become increasingly popular among researchers in the professions: social work, nursing, education, business, computer science, and occupational therapy. And while many ...
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Qualitative methods have become increasingly popular among researchers in the professions: social work, nursing, education, business, computer science, and occupational therapy. And while many comprehensive textbooks (in sociology, anthropology and psychology) describe the standard techniques and philosophical assumptions, when the audience is broadened to include practitioners, it is often assumed that practitioners are the consumers of research, not the producers. This book uses qualitative methods to engage practitioners as knowledge producers. In particular, theory-to-practice gaps are described as indispensable conditions for conducting research that matters in worlds of practice. Practitioners are encouraged to lead research by conducting engaged scholarship, which promotes collaboration between practitioners and researchers to address practice-related problems in real world settings. Whereas reductionist methods assume that practice unfolds in closed systems, where variables can be manipulated and controlled or used to predict, the argument developed in this work, using critical realist philosophy, supports the idea that practice takes place in complex open systems. This, in turn, requires a specific practice-to-research vocabulary: brute and institutional facts, contingency and necessity, essentialism, and the phenomenological practice gap. Engaged scholarship and critical realist assumptions are applied to three case studies that combine research questions with data collection techniques and analytic strategies. Thematic, grounded theory, and narrative research techniques are illustrated, including original quick-start instructions for using ATLAS.ti computer software. Institutional ethnography is described, and a case study is used to illustrate the influence of policy implementation on clinical practice.Less
Qualitative methods have become increasingly popular among researchers in the professions: social work, nursing, education, business, computer science, and occupational therapy. And while many comprehensive textbooks (in sociology, anthropology and psychology) describe the standard techniques and philosophical assumptions, when the audience is broadened to include practitioners, it is often assumed that practitioners are the consumers of research, not the producers. This book uses qualitative methods to engage practitioners as knowledge producers. In particular, theory-to-practice gaps are described as indispensable conditions for conducting research that matters in worlds of practice. Practitioners are encouraged to lead research by conducting engaged scholarship, which promotes collaboration between practitioners and researchers to address practice-related problems in real world settings. Whereas reductionist methods assume that practice unfolds in closed systems, where variables can be manipulated and controlled or used to predict, the argument developed in this work, using critical realist philosophy, supports the idea that practice takes place in complex open systems. This, in turn, requires a specific practice-to-research vocabulary: brute and institutional facts, contingency and necessity, essentialism, and the phenomenological practice gap. Engaged scholarship and critical realist assumptions are applied to three case studies that combine research questions with data collection techniques and analytic strategies. Thematic, grounded theory, and narrative research techniques are illustrated, including original quick-start instructions for using ATLAS.ti computer software. Institutional ethnography is described, and a case study is used to illustrate the influence of policy implementation on clinical practice.
Cheryl Mattingly and Linda Garro (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520218246
- eISBN:
- 9780520935228
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520218246.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Medical Anthropology
Stories of illness and healing are often arresting in their power, illuminating practices and experiences that might otherwise remain obscure. What can be learned through a comparative look at the ...
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Stories of illness and healing are often arresting in their power, illuminating practices and experiences that might otherwise remain obscure. What can be learned through a comparative look at the range of narrative theories and styles of narrative analysis used by anthropologists to make sense of their ethnographic data? Do divergent strategies yield different understandings of the illness experience and healing practices? Does a focus on narrative detract from or conceal other, more fruitful avenues for exploration? Through the analysis of stories drawn from a variety of ethnographic contexts, the contributors to this book address such questions. The book unites medical anthropology and narrative analysis to illuminate how personal narrative shapes the architecture of illness and the life course it yields.Less
Stories of illness and healing are often arresting in their power, illuminating practices and experiences that might otherwise remain obscure. What can be learned through a comparative look at the range of narrative theories and styles of narrative analysis used by anthropologists to make sense of their ethnographic data? Do divergent strategies yield different understandings of the illness experience and healing practices? Does a focus on narrative detract from or conceal other, more fruitful avenues for exploration? Through the analysis of stories drawn from a variety of ethnographic contexts, the contributors to this book address such questions. The book unites medical anthropology and narrative analysis to illuminate how personal narrative shapes the architecture of illness and the life course it yields.
Kent Puckett
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195332759
- eISBN:
- 9780199868131
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195332759.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
While everyone knows that the nineteenth-century novel is obsessed with gaffes, lapses, and blunders, who could have predicted that these would have so important a structural role to play in the ...
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While everyone knows that the nineteenth-century novel is obsessed with gaffes, lapses, and blunders, who could have predicted that these would have so important a structural role to play in the novel and its rise? Who knew that the novel in fact relies on its characters’ mistakes for its structural coherence, for its authority, for its form? Drawing simultaneously on the terms of narrative theory, sociology, and psychoanalysis, this book examines the necessary relation between social and literary form in the nineteenth-century novel as it is expressed at the site of the represented social mistake (eating peas with your knife, wearing the wrong thing, talking out of turn, etc.). Through close and careful readings of novels by Flaubert, Eliot, James, and others, this book shows that the novel achieves its coherence at the level of character, plot, and narration not in spite but because of the social mistake.Less
While everyone knows that the nineteenth-century novel is obsessed with gaffes, lapses, and blunders, who could have predicted that these would have so important a structural role to play in the novel and its rise? Who knew that the novel in fact relies on its characters’ mistakes for its structural coherence, for its authority, for its form? Drawing simultaneously on the terms of narrative theory, sociology, and psychoanalysis, this book examines the necessary relation between social and literary form in the nineteenth-century novel as it is expressed at the site of the represented social mistake (eating peas with your knife, wearing the wrong thing, talking out of turn, etc.). Through close and careful readings of novels by Flaubert, Eliot, James, and others, this book shows that the novel achieves its coherence at the level of character, plot, and narration not in spite but because of the social mistake.
Alastair Matthews
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199656998
- eISBN:
- 9780191742187
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199656998.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This book presents a narratological analysis of the Kaiserchronik, or chronicle of the emperors, an account of the Roman and Holy Roman emperors from the foundation of Rome to the run-up to the ...
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This book presents a narratological analysis of the Kaiserchronik, or chronicle of the emperors, an account of the Roman and Holy Roman emperors from the foundation of Rome to the run-up to the Second Crusade that was remarkably popular in medieval Germany. Previous research has concentrated on the structure and sources of the work and emphasized its role as a Christian narrative of history, but this study shows that the Kaiserchronik does not simply illustrate a didactic religious message: it also provides an example of how techniques of story-telling in the vernacular were developed and explored in twelfth-century Germany. Four aspects of narrative are described (time and space, motivation, perspective, and narrative strands), each of which is examined with reference to the story of a particular emperor (Constantine the Great, Charlemagne, Otto the Great, and Henry IV). Rather than dogmatically imposing a single analytical framework on the Kaiserchronik, the book takes account of the fact that modern theory cannot always be applied directly to works from premodern periods: it draws critically on, and where necessary refines, a variety of approaches, including those of Gérard Genette, Boris Uspensky, and Eberhard Lämmert. Throughout the book, the narrative techniques described are contextualized by means of comparisons with other texts in both Middle High German and Latin, so that the place of the Kaiserchronik as a literary narrative in the twelfth century becomes clear.Less
This book presents a narratological analysis of the Kaiserchronik, or chronicle of the emperors, an account of the Roman and Holy Roman emperors from the foundation of Rome to the run-up to the Second Crusade that was remarkably popular in medieval Germany. Previous research has concentrated on the structure and sources of the work and emphasized its role as a Christian narrative of history, but this study shows that the Kaiserchronik does not simply illustrate a didactic religious message: it also provides an example of how techniques of story-telling in the vernacular were developed and explored in twelfth-century Germany. Four aspects of narrative are described (time and space, motivation, perspective, and narrative strands), each of which is examined with reference to the story of a particular emperor (Constantine the Great, Charlemagne, Otto the Great, and Henry IV). Rather than dogmatically imposing a single analytical framework on the Kaiserchronik, the book takes account of the fact that modern theory cannot always be applied directly to works from premodern periods: it draws critically on, and where necessary refines, a variety of approaches, including those of Gérard Genette, Boris Uspensky, and Eberhard Lämmert. Throughout the book, the narrative techniques described are contextualized by means of comparisons with other texts in both Middle High German and Latin, so that the place of the Kaiserchronik as a literary narrative in the twelfth century becomes clear.
Bruce Clarke
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823228508
- eISBN:
- 9780823240999
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823228508.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
From Dr. Moreau's Beast People to David Cronenberg's Brundlefly, Stanislaw Lem's robot constructors in the Cyberiad to Octavia Butler's human/alien constructs in the Xenogenesis trilogy, this book ...
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From Dr. Moreau's Beast People to David Cronenberg's Brundlefly, Stanislaw Lem's robot constructors in the Cyberiad to Octavia Butler's human/alien constructs in the Xenogenesis trilogy, this book examines modern and postmodern stories of corporeal transformation through interlocking frames of posthumanism, narratology, and second-order systems theory. New media generate new metamorphs. New stories have emerged from cybernetic displacements of life, sensation, or intelligence from human beings to machines. But beyond the vogue for the cyborg and the cybernetic mash-up of the organic and the mechanical, this book develops neocybernetic systems theories illuminating alternative narratives that elicit autopoietic and symbiotic visions of the posthuman. Systems theory also transforms our modes of narrative cognition. Regarding narrative in the light of the autopoietic systems it brings into play, neocybernetics brings narrative theory into constructive relation with the systemic operations of observation, communication, and paradox. The book draws on Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Niklas Luhmann, Cary Wolfe, Mieke Bal, Katherine Hayles, Friedrich Kittler, and Lynn Margulis to read narratives of bodily metamorphosis as allegories of the contingencies of systems. Tracing the posthuman intuitions of both pre- and post-cybernetic metamorphs, it demonstrates the viability of second-order systems theories for narrative theory, media theory, cultural science studies, and literary criticism.Less
From Dr. Moreau's Beast People to David Cronenberg's Brundlefly, Stanislaw Lem's robot constructors in the Cyberiad to Octavia Butler's human/alien constructs in the Xenogenesis trilogy, this book examines modern and postmodern stories of corporeal transformation through interlocking frames of posthumanism, narratology, and second-order systems theory. New media generate new metamorphs. New stories have emerged from cybernetic displacements of life, sensation, or intelligence from human beings to machines. But beyond the vogue for the cyborg and the cybernetic mash-up of the organic and the mechanical, this book develops neocybernetic systems theories illuminating alternative narratives that elicit autopoietic and symbiotic visions of the posthuman. Systems theory also transforms our modes of narrative cognition. Regarding narrative in the light of the autopoietic systems it brings into play, neocybernetics brings narrative theory into constructive relation with the systemic operations of observation, communication, and paradox. The book draws on Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Niklas Luhmann, Cary Wolfe, Mieke Bal, Katherine Hayles, Friedrich Kittler, and Lynn Margulis to read narratives of bodily metamorphosis as allegories of the contingencies of systems. Tracing the posthuman intuitions of both pre- and post-cybernetic metamorphs, it demonstrates the viability of second-order systems theories for narrative theory, media theory, cultural science studies, and literary criticism.
Steven Belletto
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199826889
- eISBN:
- 9780199932382
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199826889.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter has two main goals: 1) to demonstrate that chance became a complex and politically-loaded cultural signifier because of the Cold War; and 2) to explain, in light of the first point, the ...
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This chapter has two main goals: 1) to demonstrate that chance became a complex and politically-loaded cultural signifier because of the Cold War; and 2) to explain, in light of the first point, the problems that chance poses for fictional narratives. Through readings and discussions of influential authors such as novelist Jerzy Kosinski, sociologist Daniel Bell, and biologist Jacques Monod, the first part of the chapter explains how chance functioned in the Cold War as a signifier of “objective reality.” From there, the chapter looks at the problem of chance in narrative fiction: namely that any inclusion of a chance event—a car accident, for example—is always inherently disingenuous because it is in fact part of an author’s design. While fiction writers prior to the Cold War of course noticed this phenomenon, it was with the attachment of chance to “objective reality” and non-chance to “totalitarian regime” that it became a source of sustained interest. I discuss this interest, and the idea of “narrative chance” (chance that occurs in narrative fiction) as being distinct from “absolute chance” (chance events that occur in real life). As shown in the subsequent chapters, this distinction became crucial to many Cold War writers committed to anti-totalitarianism even as they criticized the realities behind claims of American democratic freedom.Less
This chapter has two main goals: 1) to demonstrate that chance became a complex and politically-loaded cultural signifier because of the Cold War; and 2) to explain, in light of the first point, the problems that chance poses for fictional narratives. Through readings and discussions of influential authors such as novelist Jerzy Kosinski, sociologist Daniel Bell, and biologist Jacques Monod, the first part of the chapter explains how chance functioned in the Cold War as a signifier of “objective reality.” From there, the chapter looks at the problem of chance in narrative fiction: namely that any inclusion of a chance event—a car accident, for example—is always inherently disingenuous because it is in fact part of an author’s design. While fiction writers prior to the Cold War of course noticed this phenomenon, it was with the attachment of chance to “objective reality” and non-chance to “totalitarian regime” that it became a source of sustained interest. I discuss this interest, and the idea of “narrative chance” (chance that occurs in narrative fiction) as being distinct from “absolute chance” (chance events that occur in real life). As shown in the subsequent chapters, this distinction became crucial to many Cold War writers committed to anti-totalitarianism even as they criticized the realities behind claims of American democratic freedom.
Torben Grodal
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195371314
- eISBN:
- 9780199870585
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195371314.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This book provides analysis of how human biology, as well as human culture, determines the ways films are made and experienced. This new approach is called “bioculturalism.” The book shows how ...
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This book provides analysis of how human biology, as well as human culture, determines the ways films are made and experienced. This new approach is called “bioculturalism.” The book shows how important formats, such as films for children, romantic films, pornography, fantasy films, horror films, and sad melodramas, appeal to an array of different emotions that have been ingrained in the human embodied brain by the evolutionary process. The book also discusses how these biological dispositions are molded by culture. It explains why certain themes and emotions fascinate viewers all over the globe at all times, and how different cultures invest their own values and tastes in the universal themes.The book further uses the breakthroughs of modern brain science to explain central features of film aesthetics and to construct a general model of aesthetic experience, the PECMA flow model, which explains how the flow of information and emotions in the embodied brain provides a series of aesthetic experiences. The combination of film theory, cognitive psychology, neurology, and evolutionary theory provides explanations for why narrative forms are appealing and how and why art films use different mental mechanisms than those that support mainstream narrative films, as well as how film evokes images of inner, spiritual life and feelings of realism.Embodied Visions provides a new synthesis in film and media studies and aesthetics that combines cultural history with the long history of the evolution of our embodied brains.Less
This book provides analysis of how human biology, as well as human culture, determines the ways films are made and experienced. This new approach is called “bioculturalism.” The book shows how important formats, such as films for children, romantic films, pornography, fantasy films, horror films, and sad melodramas, appeal to an array of different emotions that have been ingrained in the human embodied brain by the evolutionary process. The book also discusses how these biological dispositions are molded by culture. It explains why certain themes and emotions fascinate viewers all over the globe at all times, and how different cultures invest their own values and tastes in the universal themes.The book further uses the breakthroughs of modern brain science to explain central features of film aesthetics and to construct a general model of aesthetic experience, the PECMA flow model, which explains how the flow of information and emotions in the embodied brain provides a series of aesthetic experiences. The combination of film theory, cognitive psychology, neurology, and evolutionary theory provides explanations for why narrative forms are appealing and how and why art films use different mental mechanisms than those that support mainstream narrative films, as well as how film evokes images of inner, spiritual life and feelings of realism.Embodied Visions provides a new synthesis in film and media studies and aesthetics that combines cultural history with the long history of the evolution of our embodied brains.
Steven Belletto
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199826889
- eISBN:
- 9780199932382
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199826889.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This book argues that chance became a complex yet conflicted cultural signifier during the Cold War, when a range of thinkers—politicians, novelists, historians, biologists, sociologists, and ...
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This book argues that chance became a complex yet conflicted cultural signifier during the Cold War, when a range of thinkers—politicians, novelists, historians, biologists, sociologists, and others—contended that totalitarianism denied the very existence and operation of chance in the world. This contention often worked by claiming that the Soviet system perpetrated a vast fiction on its population, a fiction made visible by the Soviet view that there is no such thing as chance or accident, only manifestations of historical law (hence the refrain from which the title is taken: “It was no accident, Comrade,” which encapsulates a popular American understanding of Marxism). No Accident, Comrade explains how the association of chance with democratic freedom and the denial of chance with totalitarianism circulated in Cold War culture, and then uses this opposition as a starting point for a discussion of the period’s literature. I show how writers innovated strategies for dealing with and incorporating chance, which allowed them to theorize the ever-changing relationship between the individual and the state during a largely rhetorical conflict. Indeed, by emphasizing the Cold War’s narrative quality—that is, by viewing it as a rhetorical field—this book likewise argues that pressure was put on fictional narratives in general, and that if we attune ourselves to the uses of chance in such material, we can understand how the Cold War encouraged new relationships between aesthetics and politics.Less
This book argues that chance became a complex yet conflicted cultural signifier during the Cold War, when a range of thinkers—politicians, novelists, historians, biologists, sociologists, and others—contended that totalitarianism denied the very existence and operation of chance in the world. This contention often worked by claiming that the Soviet system perpetrated a vast fiction on its population, a fiction made visible by the Soviet view that there is no such thing as chance or accident, only manifestations of historical law (hence the refrain from which the title is taken: “It was no accident, Comrade,” which encapsulates a popular American understanding of Marxism). No Accident, Comrade explains how the association of chance with democratic freedom and the denial of chance with totalitarianism circulated in Cold War culture, and then uses this opposition as a starting point for a discussion of the period’s literature. I show how writers innovated strategies for dealing with and incorporating chance, which allowed them to theorize the ever-changing relationship between the individual and the state during a largely rhetorical conflict. Indeed, by emphasizing the Cold War’s narrative quality—that is, by viewing it as a rhetorical field—this book likewise argues that pressure was put on fictional narratives in general, and that if we attune ourselves to the uses of chance in such material, we can understand how the Cold War encouraged new relationships between aesthetics and politics.
Mary M. Read
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195326789
- eISBN:
- 9780199870356
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195326789.003.0015
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
This chapter uses narrative identity theory to describe and facilitate an understanding of issues regarding the formation of a positive lesbian identity among a particular cohort of women: midlife ...
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This chapter uses narrative identity theory to describe and facilitate an understanding of issues regarding the formation of a positive lesbian identity among a particular cohort of women: midlife North American lesbian women who were born between approximately 1940 and 1965. The life experiences and recollections of North American lesbians of the baby boom cohort reflect the integration of multiple aspects of the self, continually emerging and re-forming across diverse settings. The goal of the chapter is to display the narrative identity processes midlife lesbians—who experience at least three forms of diminished privilege in North American society (being women, older, and of stigmatized sexual orientation)—have used to create lives of meaning and fulfillment. These issues are explored through the lens of a conceptual model created by analyzing narrative data gathered from life story portions that were available in existing literature.Less
This chapter uses narrative identity theory to describe and facilitate an understanding of issues regarding the formation of a positive lesbian identity among a particular cohort of women: midlife North American lesbian women who were born between approximately 1940 and 1965. The life experiences and recollections of North American lesbians of the baby boom cohort reflect the integration of multiple aspects of the self, continually emerging and re-forming across diverse settings. The goal of the chapter is to display the narrative identity processes midlife lesbians—who experience at least three forms of diminished privilege in North American society (being women, older, and of stigmatized sexual orientation)—have used to create lives of meaning and fulfillment. These issues are explored through the lens of a conceptual model created by analyzing narrative data gathered from life story portions that were available in existing literature.
Torben Grodal
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195371314
- eISBN:
- 9780199870585
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195371314.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
The chapter discusses how storytelling represents an innate mental capacity to synthesize an agency’s perceptual input, its emotions, and its output in terms of action. Insight into the architecture ...
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The chapter discusses how storytelling represents an innate mental capacity to synthesize an agency’s perceptual input, its emotions, and its output in terms of action. Insight into the architecture of the embodied brain and the PECMA flow clarifies how to understand the psychological function of stories and storytelling. The chapter further describes the way that different media—language and oral storytelling, drama, written stories, film, and video games—use different aspects of the mental “storytelling” that characterizes our ordinary experience of daily life and its actions, and it describes the historical development in narrative techniques of representation in different media. It uses this narrative theory to redefine the story-discourse dichotomy, and to argue that film narratives are typically experienced as taking place in a kind of presence, and also discusses the relation between narratives and playing games vital for interactive media. Finally, it discusses the relationship between storytelling interactivity and linearity and shows that there are a number of psychological and motivational reasons that nonlinear storytelling is difficult, and that many so-called nonlinear formats consist in fact of sets of linear stories.</ABS>Less
The chapter discusses how storytelling represents an innate mental capacity to synthesize an agency’s perceptual input, its emotions, and its output in terms of action. Insight into the architecture of the embodied brain and the PECMA flow clarifies how to understand the psychological function of stories and storytelling. The chapter further describes the way that different media—language and oral storytelling, drama, written stories, film, and video games—use different aspects of the mental “storytelling” that characterizes our ordinary experience of daily life and its actions, and it describes the historical development in narrative techniques of representation in different media. It uses this narrative theory to redefine the story-discourse dichotomy, and to argue that film narratives are typically experienced as taking place in a kind of presence, and also discusses the relation between narratives and playing games vital for interactive media. Finally, it discusses the relationship between storytelling interactivity and linearity and shows that there are a number of psychological and motivational reasons that nonlinear storytelling is difficult, and that many so-called nonlinear formats consist in fact of sets of linear stories.</ABS>
Jesse Rosenthal
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691196640
- eISBN:
- 9781400883738
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691196640.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter demonstrates how literary theory bears the mark of the ethical debates of the nineteenth century. Through a reading of Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton (1848) and Charles Dickens's Hard ...
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This chapter demonstrates how literary theory bears the mark of the ethical debates of the nineteenth century. Through a reading of Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton (1848) and Charles Dickens's Hard Times (1854), as well as a discussion of a number of classic narrative theorists, it shows how narrative theory, underwritten by a principle of forward compulsion through the text, reiterates the position of the intuitionist thinkers of the Victorian period. Both novels are examples of what people have come to call the “industrial novel,” or the “social problem novel”: a set of novels that focus on the condition of the working class. There is a strongly felt, if sometimes vague, ethical message in these novels' focus on the human misery inherent in capitalism: a general sense that it is necessary to treat other humans by some other standard than the bottom line. The chapter then considers the philosophical arguments of Bernard Williams—famous for his use of small narratives as philosophical argument—and suggests how narrative form, having subsumed the tenets of intuitionism, itself became an effective argumentative practice.Less
This chapter demonstrates how literary theory bears the mark of the ethical debates of the nineteenth century. Through a reading of Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton (1848) and Charles Dickens's Hard Times (1854), as well as a discussion of a number of classic narrative theorists, it shows how narrative theory, underwritten by a principle of forward compulsion through the text, reiterates the position of the intuitionist thinkers of the Victorian period. Both novels are examples of what people have come to call the “industrial novel,” or the “social problem novel”: a set of novels that focus on the condition of the working class. There is a strongly felt, if sometimes vague, ethical message in these novels' focus on the human misery inherent in capitalism: a general sense that it is necessary to treat other humans by some other standard than the bottom line. The chapter then considers the philosophical arguments of Bernard Williams—famous for his use of small narratives as philosophical argument—and suggests how narrative form, having subsumed the tenets of intuitionism, itself became an effective argumentative practice.
Sara Cobb
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199826209
- eISBN:
- 9780199345335
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199826209.001.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
Drawing on narrative theory, this book defines conflict as a narrative process, examines the politics of narrative violence in conflicts, and offers a critical narrative theory, not only for a new ...
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Drawing on narrative theory, this book defines conflict as a narrative process, examines the politics of narrative violence in conflicts, and offers a critical narrative theory, not only for a new definition of conflict, but also as an ethics for both conflict analysis and conflict intervention. Exemplary case analyses include some of the critical conflicts in world today, such as the Middle East, environmental conflicts, and the immigration wars in the US. The first section of the book entitled The Pragmatics of Narrative in Conflict Processes opens with a discussion of the complexities of narrating violence and pain, laying the groundwork for why these narratives matter. Subsequent chapters in this section define conflict narratives in terms of their structural features and process dynamics; this description lays the foundation for mapping the escalation of conflict narratives, as well as their transformation. The second section, entitled Critical Narrative Theory: A Lens for the Analysis of Conflicts, addresses the politics of conflict narratives. “Critical narrative theory” is offered as a framework for assessing the power dynamics of conflict narratives. Using Nelson’s (2002) notion of “damaged identities,” Foucault (2001, 2008) concept of “natality” and Lyotard’s (1989) concept of the “differend,” witnessing is defined as a narrative aesthetic practice that generate “humanizing” narratives. This section ends with a discussion of a new theory of conflict, arising from critical narrative theory. The third section, entitled Aesthetics as an Ethics of Conflict Resolution Practice examines the implications of a critical narrative theory of conflict for the practice of conflict resolution. First, the ethics derived from critical narrative theory are explored and the implications for negotiation, dialogue, deliberation, and problem-solving workshops are explored. Finally, this section will summarize conflict resolution in terms of an aesthetic for practice that calls for and supports the emergence of transformation of radicalized narratives into “better-formed” narratives. In the context of ongoing or historical violence, people tell stories about what happened, who did what to whom and why. And all too often, speaking of violence reproduces the social fractures and delegitimizes, again, those that struggle against their own marginalization. This speaking of violence deepens conflict and all too often perpetuates cycles of violence. Alternatively, sometimes people do not speak of the violence and it is erased, buried with the bodies that bear it witness, and reducing the capacity of the public to address issues emerging in the aftermath of violence and repression. However, it is also possible to speak of violence in a manner that acknowledges suffering without reproducing the social divisions and fractures. The consequences of speaking about violence depend on the narratives that are told. We both are, and we become, the stories we tell. This book takes the notion of “narrative” as foundational to conflict analysis and resolution. Different from other conflict theories that rely on account of attitudes or perceptions, in the heads of individuals, this narrative perspective presumes that meaning, structured and organized as narrative processes, is the location for both analysis of conflict, as well as intervention. But since meaning is political, in that not all stories can be told or the way they are told delegitimizes / erases Others, critical narrative theory offers a normative approach to narrative assessment and intervention, a way of evaluating narrative and designing “better-formed” stories. These stories are “better” in that they are generative of sustainable relations, they create legitimacy for all parties, and in so doing, function aesthetically and ethically to support the emergence of new histories, and new futures. Indeed, critical narrative theory offers a new lens for enabling people to speak of violence in ways that undermine the intractability of conflict.Less
Drawing on narrative theory, this book defines conflict as a narrative process, examines the politics of narrative violence in conflicts, and offers a critical narrative theory, not only for a new definition of conflict, but also as an ethics for both conflict analysis and conflict intervention. Exemplary case analyses include some of the critical conflicts in world today, such as the Middle East, environmental conflicts, and the immigration wars in the US. The first section of the book entitled The Pragmatics of Narrative in Conflict Processes opens with a discussion of the complexities of narrating violence and pain, laying the groundwork for why these narratives matter. Subsequent chapters in this section define conflict narratives in terms of their structural features and process dynamics; this description lays the foundation for mapping the escalation of conflict narratives, as well as their transformation. The second section, entitled Critical Narrative Theory: A Lens for the Analysis of Conflicts, addresses the politics of conflict narratives. “Critical narrative theory” is offered as a framework for assessing the power dynamics of conflict narratives. Using Nelson’s (2002) notion of “damaged identities,” Foucault (2001, 2008) concept of “natality” and Lyotard’s (1989) concept of the “differend,” witnessing is defined as a narrative aesthetic practice that generate “humanizing” narratives. This section ends with a discussion of a new theory of conflict, arising from critical narrative theory. The third section, entitled Aesthetics as an Ethics of Conflict Resolution Practice examines the implications of a critical narrative theory of conflict for the practice of conflict resolution. First, the ethics derived from critical narrative theory are explored and the implications for negotiation, dialogue, deliberation, and problem-solving workshops are explored. Finally, this section will summarize conflict resolution in terms of an aesthetic for practice that calls for and supports the emergence of transformation of radicalized narratives into “better-formed” narratives. In the context of ongoing or historical violence, people tell stories about what happened, who did what to whom and why. And all too often, speaking of violence reproduces the social fractures and delegitimizes, again, those that struggle against their own marginalization. This speaking of violence deepens conflict and all too often perpetuates cycles of violence. Alternatively, sometimes people do not speak of the violence and it is erased, buried with the bodies that bear it witness, and reducing the capacity of the public to address issues emerging in the aftermath of violence and repression. However, it is also possible to speak of violence in a manner that acknowledges suffering without reproducing the social divisions and fractures. The consequences of speaking about violence depend on the narratives that are told. We both are, and we become, the stories we tell. This book takes the notion of “narrative” as foundational to conflict analysis and resolution. Different from other conflict theories that rely on account of attitudes or perceptions, in the heads of individuals, this narrative perspective presumes that meaning, structured and organized as narrative processes, is the location for both analysis of conflict, as well as intervention. But since meaning is political, in that not all stories can be told or the way they are told delegitimizes / erases Others, critical narrative theory offers a normative approach to narrative assessment and intervention, a way of evaluating narrative and designing “better-formed” stories. These stories are “better” in that they are generative of sustainable relations, they create legitimacy for all parties, and in so doing, function aesthetically and ethically to support the emergence of new histories, and new futures. Indeed, critical narrative theory offers a new lens for enabling people to speak of violence in ways that undermine the intractability of conflict.
David J. Bearison
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- November 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195156126
- eISBN:
- 9780199999873
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195156126.003.0002
- Subject:
- Palliative Care, Paediatric Palliative Medicine, Patient Care and End-of-Life Decision Making
This chapter discusses the narrative theory and how narratives or stories about caring for children who die in hospitals are able to capture the messy particulars found beyond the biological ...
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This chapter discusses the narrative theory and how narratives or stories about caring for children who die in hospitals are able to capture the messy particulars found beyond the biological imperatives. It shows that these narratives are able to give voice to the quotidian pain and distress that these children invariably endure. The chapter also discusses how the narratives were obtained, and a guide to the remaining chapters is provided.Less
This chapter discusses the narrative theory and how narratives or stories about caring for children who die in hospitals are able to capture the messy particulars found beyond the biological imperatives. It shows that these narratives are able to give voice to the quotidian pain and distress that these children invariably endure. The chapter also discusses how the narratives were obtained, and a guide to the remaining chapters is provided.
Moshe Simon-Shoshan
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199773732
- eISBN:
- 9780199933129
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199773732.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
Stories of the Law deals with the question of the relationship between law and narrative in the Mishna, the early century rabbinic legal text. It argues that despite the limited number of stories in ...
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Stories of the Law deals with the question of the relationship between law and narrative in the Mishna, the early century rabbinic legal text. It argues that despite the limited number of stories in the Mishnah, “narrative” and “narrativity” are central categories not only regarding the Mishnna’s characteristics as a literary document but also for understanding the legal theory that underlies the Mishnah. Through the close reading of numerous mishnaic stories, the author demonstrates that stories are crucial to the Mishnah’s efforts to construct the rabbis as the sole legitimate source of legal authority in Judaism. At the same time, these stories consistently critique the notion of rabbinic authority, ultimately presenting a complex and nuanced portrayal of the rabbis as religious leaders. In addition to its contributions to the study of rabbinic literature, the book presents new theoretical frameworks both understanding the relationship between law and narrative and for describing and evaluating narrative discourse as it interacts with other form of language and expression, a central issue in narrative theory.Less
Stories of the Law deals with the question of the relationship between law and narrative in the Mishna, the early century rabbinic legal text. It argues that despite the limited number of stories in the Mishnah, “narrative” and “narrativity” are central categories not only regarding the Mishnna’s characteristics as a literary document but also for understanding the legal theory that underlies the Mishnah. Through the close reading of numerous mishnaic stories, the author demonstrates that stories are crucial to the Mishnah’s efforts to construct the rabbis as the sole legitimate source of legal authority in Judaism. At the same time, these stories consistently critique the notion of rabbinic authority, ultimately presenting a complex and nuanced portrayal of the rabbis as religious leaders. In addition to its contributions to the study of rabbinic literature, the book presents new theoretical frameworks both understanding the relationship between law and narrative and for describing and evaluating narrative discourse as it interacts with other form of language and expression, a central issue in narrative theory.
Suzanne Keen
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195175769
- eISBN:
- 9780199851232
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195175769.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This book presents an account of the relationships among novel reading, empathy, and altruism. Though readers' and authors' empathy certainly contribute to the emotional resonance of fiction and its ...
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This book presents an account of the relationships among novel reading, empathy, and altruism. Though readers' and authors' empathy certainly contribute to the emotional resonance of fiction and its success in the marketplace, this book finds the case for altruistic consequences of novel reading inconclusive. It offers instead a detailed theory of narrative empathy, with proposals about its deployment by novelists and its results in readers. The book engages with neuroscience and contemporary psychological research on empathy, bringing affect to the center of cognitive literary studies' scrutiny of narrative fiction. Drawing on narrative theory, literary history, philosophy, and contemporary scholarship in discourse processing, the book brings together resources and challenges for the literary study of empathy and the psychological study of fiction reading. Empathy robustly enters into affective responses to fiction, but its proper role in shaping the behavior of emotional readers has been debated for three centuries. The book surveys these debates and offers a series of hypotheses about literary empathy, including narrative techniques inviting empathetic response. It argues that above all readers' perception of a text's fictiveness increases the likelihood of readers' empathy, by releasing readers from their guarded responses to the demands of real others. The book confirms the centrality of narrative empathy as a strategy, as well as a subject, of contemporary novelists. Despite the disrepute of putative human universals, novelists from around the world endorse the notion of shared human emotions when they overtly call upon their readers' empathy. Consequently, the book suggests, if narrative empathy is to be better understood, women's reading and popular fiction must be accorded the respect of experimental inquiry.Less
This book presents an account of the relationships among novel reading, empathy, and altruism. Though readers' and authors' empathy certainly contribute to the emotional resonance of fiction and its success in the marketplace, this book finds the case for altruistic consequences of novel reading inconclusive. It offers instead a detailed theory of narrative empathy, with proposals about its deployment by novelists and its results in readers. The book engages with neuroscience and contemporary psychological research on empathy, bringing affect to the center of cognitive literary studies' scrutiny of narrative fiction. Drawing on narrative theory, literary history, philosophy, and contemporary scholarship in discourse processing, the book brings together resources and challenges for the literary study of empathy and the psychological study of fiction reading. Empathy robustly enters into affective responses to fiction, but its proper role in shaping the behavior of emotional readers has been debated for three centuries. The book surveys these debates and offers a series of hypotheses about literary empathy, including narrative techniques inviting empathetic response. It argues that above all readers' perception of a text's fictiveness increases the likelihood of readers' empathy, by releasing readers from their guarded responses to the demands of real others. The book confirms the centrality of narrative empathy as a strategy, as well as a subject, of contemporary novelists. Despite the disrepute of putative human universals, novelists from around the world endorse the notion of shared human emotions when they overtly call upon their readers' empathy. Consequently, the book suggests, if narrative empathy is to be better understood, women's reading and popular fiction must be accorded the respect of experimental inquiry.
Bruce Clarke
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816691005
- eISBN:
- 9781452949406
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816691005.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This book rethinks narrative and media through systems theory. Reconceiving interrelations among subjects, media, significations, and the social, this study demonstrates second-order systems theory’s ...
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This book rethinks narrative and media through systems theory. Reconceiving interrelations among subjects, media, significations, and the social, this study demonstrates second-order systems theory’s potential to provide fresh insights into the familiar topics of media studies and narrative theory. This book offers a synthesis of the neocybernetic theories of cognition formulated by biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, incubated by cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster, and cultivated in Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory. From this foundation, it interrogates media theory and narrative theory through a critique of information theory in favor of autopoietic conceptions of cognition. Clarke’s purview includes examinations of novels (Mrs. Dalloway and Mind of My Mind), movies (Avatar, Memento, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and even Aramis, Bruno Latour’s idiosyncratic meditation on a failed plan for an automated subway.Less
This book rethinks narrative and media through systems theory. Reconceiving interrelations among subjects, media, significations, and the social, this study demonstrates second-order systems theory’s potential to provide fresh insights into the familiar topics of media studies and narrative theory. This book offers a synthesis of the neocybernetic theories of cognition formulated by biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, incubated by cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster, and cultivated in Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory. From this foundation, it interrogates media theory and narrative theory through a critique of information theory in favor of autopoietic conceptions of cognition. Clarke’s purview includes examinations of novels (Mrs. Dalloway and Mind of My Mind), movies (Avatar, Memento, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and even Aramis, Bruno Latour’s idiosyncratic meditation on a failed plan for an automated subway.
Joseph R. Slaughter
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823228171
- eISBN:
- 9780823241033
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823228171.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
The humanist discourse of human rights risked being overrun by seemingly plotless accounting methods for representing and imagining the contemporary social world and human development. This chapter ...
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The humanist discourse of human rights risked being overrun by seemingly plotless accounting methods for representing and imagining the contemporary social world and human development. This chapter explores a more general intersection of the conceptual vocabularies of human rights and narrative theory. When Ireland's former president Mary Robinson reproached the United Nations for straying from its historical plot and losing the thread of the human rights plot to other imperatives, she suggested that state and other interests have corrupted the basic humanist vision of free and full human personality development. However, in fact, lamentations over a degraded human rights plot — and the blunting of its counteractive force — draw too neat a distinction between a rebellious spirit of human rights and their current crass instrumentalization by states and other international actors. As the chapter shows, with regard to rebellion and legitimation, both human rights and the Bildungsroman equivocate as a matter of form.Less
The humanist discourse of human rights risked being overrun by seemingly plotless accounting methods for representing and imagining the contemporary social world and human development. This chapter explores a more general intersection of the conceptual vocabularies of human rights and narrative theory. When Ireland's former president Mary Robinson reproached the United Nations for straying from its historical plot and losing the thread of the human rights plot to other imperatives, she suggested that state and other interests have corrupted the basic humanist vision of free and full human personality development. However, in fact, lamentations over a degraded human rights plot — and the blunting of its counteractive force — draw too neat a distinction between a rebellious spirit of human rights and their current crass instrumentalization by states and other international actors. As the chapter shows, with regard to rebellion and legitimation, both human rights and the Bildungsroman equivocate as a matter of form.
Torben Grodal
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159834
- eISBN:
- 9780191673719
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159834.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This book is a bold theoretical account of the role of emotions and cognition in producing the aesthetic effects of film and television genres. It argues that film genres are mental structures that ...
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This book is a bold theoretical account of the role of emotions and cognition in producing the aesthetic effects of film and television genres. It argues that film genres are mental structures that integrate sensations, emotions, and actions, activating the viewer's body and mind. Using recent developments in neuroscience and cognitive science, in combination with narrative theory and film theory, the author provides an alternative account to that offered by psychoanalysis explaining identification and the correlation of viewer reaction with specific film genres. The book concludes with an analysis of the emotional structures of comic fiction, metafiction, crime fiction, horror, and melodrama. It is unique in describing a wide range of problems and issues within film studies, from a cognitive, neurophysiological, and ecological point of view.Less
This book is a bold theoretical account of the role of emotions and cognition in producing the aesthetic effects of film and television genres. It argues that film genres are mental structures that integrate sensations, emotions, and actions, activating the viewer's body and mind. Using recent developments in neuroscience and cognitive science, in combination with narrative theory and film theory, the author provides an alternative account to that offered by psychoanalysis explaining identification and the correlation of viewer reaction with specific film genres. The book concludes with an analysis of the emotional structures of comic fiction, metafiction, crime fiction, horror, and melodrama. It is unique in describing a wide range of problems and issues within film studies, from a cognitive, neurophysiological, and ecological point of view.
Mark Currie
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748624249
- eISBN:
- 9780748652037
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624249.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book brings together ideas about time from narrative theory and philosophy. It argues that literary criticism and narratology have approached narrative primarily as a form of retrospect, and ...
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This book brings together ideas about time from narrative theory and philosophy. It argues that literary criticism and narratology have approached narrative primarily as a form of retrospect, and demonstrates through a series of arguments and readings that anticipation and other forms of projection into the future offer new analytical perspectives to narrative criticism and theory. The book offers an account of ‘prolepsis’ or ‘flashforward’ in the contemporary novel that retrieves it from the realm of experimentation and places it at the heart of a contemporary mode of being, both personal and collective, which experiences the present as the object of a future memory. With reference to some of the most important recent developments in the philosophy of time, it aims to define a set of questions about tense and temporal reference in narrative that make it possible to reconsider the function of stories in contemporary culture. The text also reopens traditional questions about the difference between literature and philosophy in relation to knowledge of time. In the context of these questions, it offers analyses of a range of contemporary fiction by writers such as Ali Smith, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Graham Swift.Less
This book brings together ideas about time from narrative theory and philosophy. It argues that literary criticism and narratology have approached narrative primarily as a form of retrospect, and demonstrates through a series of arguments and readings that anticipation and other forms of projection into the future offer new analytical perspectives to narrative criticism and theory. The book offers an account of ‘prolepsis’ or ‘flashforward’ in the contemporary novel that retrieves it from the realm of experimentation and places it at the heart of a contemporary mode of being, both personal and collective, which experiences the present as the object of a future memory. With reference to some of the most important recent developments in the philosophy of time, it aims to define a set of questions about tense and temporal reference in narrative that make it possible to reconsider the function of stories in contemporary culture. The text also reopens traditional questions about the difference between literature and philosophy in relation to knowledge of time. In the context of these questions, it offers analyses of a range of contemporary fiction by writers such as Ali Smith, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Graham Swift.
