Digital Fiction and the Unnatural: Transmedial Narrative Theory, Method, and Analysis: Theory and Interpretation of Narrative
Editat de Astrid Ensslin, Alice Bellen Limba Engleză Hardback – mar 2021
Digital Fiction and the Unnatural: Transmedial Narrative Theory, Method, and Analysis offers the first comprehensive and systematic theoretical, methodological, and analytical examination of unnatural narratology as a medium-specific and transmedial phenomenon. It applies and adapts key concepts of narrative theory and analysis to digital-born fictions ranging from hypertext and interactive fiction to 3D-narrative video games, app fiction, and virtual reality. The book addresses the unique affordances of digital fiction by focusing on multilinearity and narrative contradiction, interactional metalepsis, impossible time and space, “extreme” digital narration, and medium-specific forms of textual “you.” In so doing, the book refines, critiques, and expands unnatural, cognitive, and transmedial narratology by placing the form of these new narratives front and center.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780814214565
ISBN-10: 0814214568
Pagini: 218
Ilustrații: 13 b&w
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 20 mm
Greutate: 0.43 kg
Ediția:1
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Ohio State University Press
Seria Theory and Interpretation of Narrative
ISBN-10: 0814214568
Pagini: 218
Ilustrații: 13 b&w
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 20 mm
Greutate: 0.43 kg
Ediția:1
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Ohio State University Press
Seria Theory and Interpretation of Narrative
Recenzii
“Digital Fiction and the Unnatural proposes new concepts and reading strategies that will be of particular interest to scholars in the fields of transmedial narratology and unnatural narratology, while also offering new insights and material to those interested in expanding their narratological toolkit or to readers with an interest in experimental narratives.” —Sarah J. Link, DIEGESIS
“Whereas this book specifically contributes to several branches of narratology, scholars in fields such as video game studies, popular culture studies, and affect studies may find its theories and methods useful. Digital Fiction and the Unnatural stands as a vibrant, field-expanding work of scholarship. Summing up: Highly recommended.” —CHOICE Reviews
“Digital Fiction and the Unnatural is both compelling and convincing. The book presents new toolkits on the basis of digital narratives that involve antimimetic segments. On one hand, it thusfills a gap within digital narratology by highlighting the fact that various (and hitherto unexplored) unnatural segments exist in digital fiction. On the other hand, it takes unnatural narratology one step further by applying and refining the existing methodology through an entirely new corpus.” —Jan Alber, coeditor of Unnatural Narratology: Extensions, Revisions, and Challenges
Notă biografică
Astrid Ensslin is Professor of Digital Humanities and Game Studies at the University of Alberta. Alice Bell is Professor of English Language and Literature in the Department of Humanities at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK.
Extras
In narratives across media, we as readers, viewers, listeners, and players regularly encounter moments of surprise, confusion, and bewilderment. These effects may be due to psychological, situative factors impeding our narrative comprehension, such as lack of concentration, technical glitches, or historical discrepancies between the time of text creation and reception. Yet, more often than not, they are part of authorial intent in texts that deliberately play with and subvert conventions of storytelling and narrative design. In novels, for example, we may be startled by a homodiegetic narrator suddenly addressing us as readers, thus seemingly pulling us into the ontological realm of the storyworld—a logical impossibility in its own right. A film director might plot a sequence of scenes in such a way as to suggest to viewers that multiple, mutually exclusive stories might have happened, thus disrupting our common habit of “narrativizing” (Fludernik 1996) or mentally construing a meaningful, nonambiguous story out of individual plot elements. In videogames, we may be startled when a game world features a voiced-over narrator that tells a story—in the past tense—about what our reader/player(s) did in the very situation that we as players, alias our reader/player, are facing momentarily, while simultaneously offering us a variety of options for how to deviate from the orally narrated storyline.
The ways in and degrees to which narratives across media might intentionally evoke feelings of surprise, bewilderment, or alienation are inextricably linked with the conventions that are associated with particular media and subsequently subverted or broken by such narratives. These conventions are highly genre- and medium-specific. While, for example, forms of second-person narration and reader address (or textual “you,” in short; see Herman 1994) in prose fiction might—despite their increasing frequency throughout the medium’s history—still perplex us as readers at least temporarily, in a videogame or interactive digital fiction we would be surprised if “you” was not ubiquitously employed to engage us ergodically in rule-based, narrative performance and enactment.
Taking the medium-conscious, comparative framework of transmedial narratology (see Thon 2016; Ryan and Thon 2014) as both a starting point and a key goal for theoretical development, this book offers the first comprehensive and systematic examination of unnatural narratives as they occur in an emergent yet fast-evolving form of interactive, computer-based narrative: digital-born, literary, and ludic narrative media, or digital fictions, as we call them, which combine forms of written, oral, cinematographic, aural-acoustic, animated, ergodic-interactive, and ludonarrative storytelling. More specifically, digital fiction is “fiction written for and read on a computer screen that pursues its verbal, discursive and/or conceptual complexity through the digital medium, and would lose something of its aesthetic and semiotic function if it were removed from that medium” (Bell et al. 2010). ). It is a form of experimental fiction whose structure, form, and meaning are dictated by the computational context in which it is produced and received. It includes works of hypertext fiction, Flash fiction (as well as fiction produced using other digital, web-based multimedia software and programming languages, such as HTML5, QuickTime, and JavaScript), Interactive Fiction (IF), app-fictions for tablets and smartphones, and narrative videogames that experiment with and subvert conventions of ludonarrativity. Semiotically, digital fictions may be entirely text-based, involving written language only (such as in many hypertext and Interactive Fictions, as well as Twine games). Alternatively, they may combine literary creativity—in an inclusive sense that incorporates orality and writing—with other modes such as sound, image, animation, and/or film. In some cases, however, they may not feature much written or voiced-over text at all. Indeed, they may involve first- or third-person-avatar navigation through 3D worlds, and these embodied experiences increasingly involve Virtual Reality technologies like HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Typically, yet not exclusively, digital fictions can be read, played, or experienced in multilinear ways, and reader/players often make choices about their journey through the text or storyworld by, for example, following links or responding to textual or visual prompts from the work. They are therefore involved in the construction of these multimodal narratives and must interact throughout the reading experience.
Taking the medium-conscious, comparative framework of transmedial narratology (see Thon 2016; Ryan and Thon 2014) as both a starting point and a key goal for theoretical development, this book offers the first comprehensive and systematic examination of unnatural narratives as they occur in an emergent yet fast-evolving form of interactive, computer-based narrative: digital-born, literary, and ludic narrative media, or digital fictions, as we call them, which combine forms of written, oral, cinematographic, aural-acoustic, animated, ergodic-interactive, and ludonarrative storytelling. More specifically, digital fiction is “fiction written for and read on a computer screen that pursues its verbal, discursive and/or conceptual complexity through the digital medium, and would lose something of its aesthetic and semiotic function if it were removed from that medium” (Bell et al. 2010). ). It is a form of experimental fiction whose structure, form, and meaning are dictated by the computational context in which it is produced and received. It includes works of hypertext fiction, Flash fiction (as well as fiction produced using other digital, web-based multimedia software and programming languages, such as HTML5, QuickTime, and JavaScript), Interactive Fiction (IF), app-fictions for tablets and smartphones, and narrative videogames that experiment with and subvert conventions of ludonarrativity. Semiotically, digital fictions may be entirely text-based, involving written language only (such as in many hypertext and Interactive Fictions, as well as Twine games). Alternatively, they may combine literary creativity—in an inclusive sense that incorporates orality and writing—with other modes such as sound, image, animation, and/or film. In some cases, however, they may not feature much written or voiced-over text at all. Indeed, they may involve first- or third-person-avatar navigation through 3D worlds, and these embodied experiences increasingly involve Virtual Reality technologies like HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Typically, yet not exclusively, digital fictions can be read, played, or experienced in multilinear ways, and reader/players often make choices about their journey through the text or storyworld by, for example, following links or responding to textual or visual prompts from the work. They are therefore involved in the construction of these multimodal narratives and must interact throughout the reading experience.
Cuprins
Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Multilinearity and Narrative Contradiction 2 Interactional Metalepsis 3 Impossible Space and Time 4 “Extreme” Digital Narration 5 It’s All About “You” Conclusion Bibliography Index
Descriere
Refines, critiques, and expands unnatural, cognitive, and transmedial narratology by looking at digital-born fictions.