Frontiers of Narrative Studies最新文献

{"title":"“We don’t get to stay the same way we started”: The walking dead, augmented television, and sociological character-building","authors":"M. Freeman","doi":"10.1515/fns-2019-0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2019-0017","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The dominant turn towards transmediality across the contemporary media industries has brought a range of emerging digital innovations and new possibilities for telling stories, be it in interactive television experiences, apps, social media, and so on. Despite such rich possibilities, the transmedia phenomenon has also arguably led to a kind of indirect flattening out of how we now understand different media forms, platforms, stories, and even characters. This article will explore the character-building practices that have been employed in augmenting the televisual experience of The walking dead (2010–present) across platforms. It looks at The walking dead: Red machete (2017–2018), a six-part webisode series available on AMC’s website, the AMC Story Sync facility (2012–present), a double-screen application designed to enable audiences to post live comments about the episodes, respond to surveys, and talk to other audiences via a chat platform, and finally AMC’s Talking dead (2011–present), a 30-minute accompanying talk show. I demonstrate how these three examples of what I call augmented television draw on sociological and anthropological notions of communication, modern social life, and environment in ways that present chances for what I call sociological character-building.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90960849","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Versifying Batman: Superheroes in contemporary poetry","authors":"J. Thoss","doi":"10.1515/fns-2019-0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2019-0016","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Since the late 1980 s, poets from the US and, to a lesser extent, the UK have increasingly featured superheroes in their work, mostly appropriating iconic figures along the lines of Batman or Superman and exploring some aspect of their personality (e. g., Batman’s relationship to Robin, Superman’s loneliness) in dramatic monologues. The prevailing if not sole account of this phenomenon argues that these characters provide a shared mythology to a generation of writers to whom biblical and classical references are no longer readily available. It also ties the superheroes’ provenance exclusively to the medium of comics. This latter point, in particular, is open to debate, insofar as since the late 1980 s, superheroes are, more than ever, part of media franchises that treat comic books as but one among many outlets. The present article hence views the superheroes in poetry not so much as an appropriation of comic book but of transmedia characters. Simon Armitage’s seminal poem “Kid” (1992), for instance – a diatribe by Robin directed at Batman’s dismissal of him – resonates as much with the 1960 s TV series or Tim Burton’s Batman films (1989, 1992) as with the dark knight’s reinvention at the hands of comic book writers such as Frank Miller or Alan Moore. At the same time, the article aims to locate the place of the seemingly insular genre of poetry within a “convergence culture” that disseminates superheroes in the media ecology. Evidently, the “superhero poems” are not licensed creations that partake in officially sanctioned transmedia networks. Neither, however, are they a product of fandom and participatory culture. Instead, I would suggest that poetry here tentatively engages with the media culture that has factored into its marginalization during the past decades.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75531184","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Kyara revisited: The pre-narrative character-state of Japanese character theory","authors":"Lukas R. A. Wilde","doi":"10.1515/fns-2019-0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2019-0014","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article proposes to take a closer look at a variety of contemporary Japanese “character” franchises which cannot be accounted for if the entities in question are primarily understood with reference to diegetic worlds or stories. Rather, virtual idols like Hatsune Miku, fictional mascots like Kumamon, or notorious product placement figures such as Hello Kitty all seem to circulate mostly on non-narrative artifacts such as clothes, office supplies, or decontextualized artworks, and within mediated performances such as stage musicals, cosplay, or public appearances in full-body suits. They are nevertheless quite typical for the Japanese “media mix” franchising model, designed to allow for user-level reshuffling and reenactment. Such “characters without stories,” or kyara, are thus best understood as “mediated performers,” as fictional actors that can take on any fictional role attributed to them within the participatory cultures and collective creations of fan manga (dōjinshi), fan artworks, or even cosplay. Theorists such as Itō (2005) or Azuma (2009) therefore differentiate sharply between kyarakutā und kyara, the latter being a pre- or meta-narrative “nodal point” for diverging games of make-believe. Kyara can just as easily be enacted and performed as they can be brought back into narrative (kyarakutā) contexts. The following article relates and contrast these notions to international (“Western”) character theories and argues for their relevance beyond “exotic” Japanese contexts.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74777644","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Transmedia characters: Theory and analysis","authors":"Jan-Noël Thon","doi":"10.1515/fns-2019-0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2019-0012","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article sketches a theoretical framework and method for the analysis of transmedia characters that focuses on specific instantiations of these characters in individual media texts, before asking how these local work-specific characters relate to other local work-specific characters or coalesce into glocal transmedia characters as part of global transmedia character networks, thus evading what one could consider an undue emphasis on the “model of the single character” when analyzing the various characters that are, for example called Sherlock Holmes, Batman, or Lara Croft. The connections between these work-specific characters within transmedia character network could then be described as either relations of redundancy, relations of expansion, or relations of modification – with only redundancy and expansion allowing for medial representations of work-specific characters to contribute to the representation of a single transmedia character. In intersubjectively constructing characters across media, however, recipients will not only take into account powerful normative discourses that police the representation of characters across media but also draw on their accumulated knowledge about previously represented work-specific or transmedia characters as well as about transmedia character templates and even more general transmedia character types.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78360565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction: Characters across media","authors":"Jan-Noël Thon, Lukas R. A. Wilde","doi":"10.1515/fns-2019-0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2019-0011","url":null,"abstract":"Contemporary media culture is fundamentally shaped by a technological and cultural media convergence that has also led to the continued rise of transmedia franchises such as The lord of the rings or Harry Potter, Star wars or A song of ice and fire/Game of thrones, The walking dead or Doctor who, the DC or Marvel universes,Warcraft or Tomb raider. During the past decade, literary, media, and cultural studies have increasingly become aware of the socio-cultural significance of these franchises as well as of the considerable theoretical and methodological challenges their study presents. A range of book-length studies by scholars such as Henry Jenkins (2006), Kristin Thompson (2007), Robert A. Brookey (2010), Elizabeth Evans (2011), Mark J. P. Wolf (2012), Derek Johnson (2013), Colin B. Harvey (2015), Matthew Freeman (2016), or Dan Hassler-Forest (2016) examine important aspects of the production, aesthetics, and reception of transmedia franchises in convergent media culture. Yet, while virtually all of these studies mention characters at some point and there is a solid consensus that characters fulfil key integrating functions for many transmedia franchises, their reception, and the continued engagement of their fans within networks of collaborative creation, there is as of yet comparatively little research that focuses specifically on the forms and functions of characters across media (see, however, the discussion of “intertextual characters” in Margolin 1996; of “transtextual characters” in Richardson 2010; or of “transmedia characters” in Bertetti 2014; as well as various in-depth studies of “character-focused” franchises such as Brooker 2012, 2013; Condry 2009; Denson 2014; Hills 2010, 2015; Pearson 2015; Steinberg 2012). This is of course not to say that there are no attempts aimed toward a better understanding of the forms and functions of characters in different media. While it may still be true “that many have written only a little and only a few have written much on characters” (Eder 2008 a: 40; “dass viele nur wenig und nur wenige viel zum Bereich der Figur geschrieben haben”), we now have a range of mediumspecific theories of characters not only in literary texts and theatrical perfor-","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78043367","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Corrigendum to: Mapped stories: Cartography, history, and the representation of time in space","authors":"P. Carrard","doi":"10.1515/fns-2019-8888","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2019-8888","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72632333","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Frontmatter","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/fns-2019-frontmatter1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2019-frontmatter1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77924072","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Imaginary scenarios: On the use and misuse of fiction","authors":"M. Grishakova, Remo Gramigna, S. Sorokin","doi":"10.1515/fns-2019-0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2019-0008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper argues that the examination of representational (formal) and semantic (referential) features of fictional and factual narratives would be incomplete without discussing specific pragmatic (communicative, performative, heuristic, and cognitive) functions of fiction – how and why “fictions” are used in literature and arts, but also in scientific, philosophical, and everyday discourses. On the one hand, the pragmatic approach blurs the fictional/ factual divide and identifies similarities in the use of fiction across disciplinary borders. On the other, as we argue, to avoid panfictionalism inherent in Vaihinger’s philosophy of “as if” the pragmatic act of boundary-crossing should be accompanied by mapping out new “cross-territorial” forms and distinctions. The paper revises and recasts the “cross-territorial” concept of scenario as a narrative structure and a type of fictional modeling and explores its semantic and pragmatic features.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81518012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The critique of the common theory of narrative fiction in narratology: Pursuing difference","authors":"Tommy Sandberg","doi":"10.1515/fns-2019-0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2019-0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article aims to characterize a commonly misunderstood and neglected critique of narratology and insists that the critique could advance the narratological discussions if taken more seriously. I describe the notions of three individual critics and one group of critics and their suggested alternatives to what they hold to be the dominating description of narrative fiction in narratology. In turn, I take up Sylvie Patron’s linguistic approach, Lars-Åke Skalin’s aesthetic approach, and Richard Walsh’s pragmatic approach, as well as unnatural narratology (which is less radical), and suggest that they have a Difference approach to narrative fiction. The critique is contrasted with what I refer to as a Sameness approach, guiding the dominating description of narrative fiction in narratology. The Sameness approach relates novels and short stories to a notion of a default mode of “narrative” which is based on situated speech about something that has happened. This is, according to the critics, a mistake. The main thrust of the critics, although with some exceptions, is instead that narrative fiction needs to be approached as sui generis in order to be described effectively. Yet how this should be done is still open for debate.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89196608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Conflicts between founder and CEO narratives: Counter-narrative, character and identification in organisational changes","authors":"P. K. Hansen, Marianne Wolff Lundholt","doi":"10.1515/fns-2019-0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2019-0007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Corporate communication has long been viewed through the lens of narrative and storytelling. Over time, a wide variety of conceptions have been developed in this field with respect to the special circumstances regarding the organisational communicative situation, which differs from other materialisations of narrative. In this article, however, we will explore the value of a more general approach, which pays attention to some of the recurring features of narrative across media and communicative situations. We will approach organisational narrative through common analytical and narratological concepts such as master narrative and counter-narrative, character, identification and actantial roles. Specifically, we investigate the organisational change in the Danish-owned multinational company Danfoss and examine how the materialisation of a founder narrative and a CEO master narrative each evoke different expectations, reactions and counter-narratives among the employees. Our empirical material consists of public communication in, from and around the organisation, and focus group interviews conducted at Danfoss China.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2019-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89789102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}