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„Meine Nervosität“: Der autobiographische Fall in Nervenheilratgebern um 1900
Get PDFAround 1900 a wide range of self-help books adopt the tendency among laymen medical practitioners to denounce the sole authority of the medical establishment to cure mental and physical dysfunctions related to the so called „Zeitkrankheit“ of neurasthenia. In different autobiographical case narratives ranging from a storyline in form of an odyssey of failed attempts to find therapeutic relief to an imaginary dialogue structuring the account, the authors use their story of successful self-healing to authorize and legitimize their positions. At the same time, on a performative level, they put themselves in the position of spokesmen for an imaginary peer group of external experts who believe that primarily the right mind set suffices to overcome their condition. Drawing on J. M. Lotman’s view on literature as a topological model-building system, the article traces how this claim against conventional medicine is made by focusing on the event of a figure transgressing the semantic boundary between heteronomy and autonomy
Recognition and Empathy in Illness and Disability Memoirs: Christina Middlebrook’s Seeing the Crab and Harriet McBryde Johnson’s Too Late to Die Young
Get PDFFocusing on the concepts of narrative empathy and recognition, this article aims to explore ways in which personal narratives may promote a renewed perception of illness and disability. Taking its cue from studies by Rita Felski (2008) and Suzanne Keen (2013), it investigates how empathic experience reflects the force and intensity of aesthetic encounters. Specifically, it addresses two texts that deal with the experience of illness and disability: Christina Middlebrook’s Seeing the Crab. A Memoir of Dying Before I Do (1996) and Harriet McBryde Johnson’s Too Late to Die Young. Nearly True Tales from a Life (2005). These authors write their lives in order to influence the way we perceive and understand illness and disability. Their major cultural mediation lies in their willingness to connect with their readers both affectively and cognitively, counter-arguing the culture of denial of death and rejecting pity and compassion in the face of illness and disability
Narrating Science and Religion: Storytelling Strategies in Journey of the Universe
Get PDFWhile scientific and religious narratives use distinct discourse strategies to reach different audiences, the documentary film Journey of the Universe combines scientific and humanistic perspectives to narrate the origin and evolution of the universe, life on Earth, and human consciousness. This science-based mythic telling of the universe story foregrounds science to enhance the story’s plausibility while using mythic elements to invite an ethical response. We evaluate how this film blends scientific and mythic storytelling strategies to present a plausible story with moral force. Journey of the Universe presents an image of humanity as naturally emerging from an increasingly complex cosmos, capable of profound wonder, and poised to use its intellectual gifts to renew the face of the earth. We argue that narrative strategies aligning scientific content with the viewer’s personal experiences of nature are generally effective, and that the film’s focus on the local and terrestrial, even in the midst of the vastness of the cosmos, supports its ecological message
Kein Volk ohne Erzählung.: Michael Neumanns Die fünf Ströme des Erzählens (2013)
Get PDFMichael Neumann: Die fünf Ströme des Erzählens. Eine Anthropologie der Narration. Berlin / Boston: de Gruyter 2013 (= Narratologia, Bd. 35). 703 S. EUR 139,95. ISBN 978-3-11-031288-
Gdańsk Narratological Group: Marta Aleksandrowicz ; Bartosz Lutostański ; Miłosz Wojtyna
Get PDFThis article presents a new narratological research group operating at the University of Gdańsk, Poland: Gdańsk Narratological Group. The aim of the article is twofold: to describe in three separate sections the main areas of research into rhetorical, feminist and unnatural narratology by outlining ongoing studies and individual projects, and to delineate the group’s goals and objectives for the near future
Alteritäre Narratologie: Eine Einführung in mittelalterliches Erzählen als Beitrag zur mediävistischen Perspektivierung der Erzähltheorie
Get PDFArmin Schulz: Erzähltheorie in mediävistischer Perspektive. Hg. von Manuel Braun, Alexandra Dunkel und Jan-Dirk Müller. Berlin / Boston: de Gruyter 2012. 431 S. EUR 119,95. ISBN 978-3-11-024038-
Video Game Characters: Theory and Analysis
Get PDFThis essay develops a method for the analysis of video game characters based on a theoretical understanding of their medium-specific representation and the mental processes involved in their intersubjective construction by video game players. We propose to distinguish, first, between narration, simulation, and communication as three modes of representation particularly salient for contemporary video games and the characters they represent, second, between narrative, ludic, and social experience as three ways in which players perceive video game characters and their representations, and, third, between three dimensions of video game characters as ‘intersubjective constructs’, which usually are to be analyzed not only as fictional beings with certain diegetic properties but also as game pieces with certain ludic properties and, in those cases in which they function as avatars in the social space of a multiplayer game, as representations of other players. Having established these basic distinctions, we proceed to analyze their realization and interrelation by reference to the character of Martin Walker from the third-person shooter Spec Ops: The Line (Yager Development 2012), the highly customizable player-controlled characters from the role-playing game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda 2011), and the complex multidimensional characters in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game Star Wars: The Old Republic (BioWare 2011-2014)
Zwischen Geschichtswissenschaft und Narratologie: Jonas Grethlein und Christopher B. Krebs über die Bedeutung und Komplexität von Zeit und Erzählung in antiken historischen Texten
Get PDFJonas Grethlein / Christopher B. Krebs (Hg.): Time and Narrative in Ancient Historiography. The ‘Plupast’ from Herodotus to Appian. Cambridge: University Press 2012. EUR 60,00 (USD 99,00). ISBN 978-1-107-00740-6 Der vorliegende Sammelband ist an der Schnittstelle von Geschichtswissenschaft und Narratologie einzuordnen. Die Altertumswissenschaftler Jonas Grethlein und Christopher B. Krebs beleuchten die Bedeutung von Zeit und Erzählung in der antiken Historiographie aus einem neuen Blickwinkel, dem des „Plupast“. Das Anliegen des Sammelbandes ist dabei ein Grundsätzliches: Vor dem Hintergrund der zeitlichen Komplexität antiker historischer Erzählungen geht es ihm darum, neue Erkenntnisse über die antike Geschichtsschreibung zu gewinnen. Zum Aufbau des Bandes: Nach einer allgemeinen Einführung der Herausgeber folgen beispielhafte Interpretationen antiker Autoren im Hinblick auf das Plupast. Das Spektrum der Analysen reicht dabei von Herodot über Thukydides, Xenophon, Sallust, Dionysios von Halikarnassos, Livius, Tacitus und Plutarch bis hin zu Appian
Defining Narrative Journalism Through the Concept of Plot
Get PDFNarrative journalism, as has been frequently stressed, offers stories closer to fictional narratives than to conventional press stories, at least in their writing techniques and in the kind of truth they intend to convey. But what has been extensively examined are the implications of this hybridization for the characteristics of such narratives. This article will highlight how these narratives differ from Lits’s notion of récit médiatique and from the “narratives” Revaz, Pahud and Baroni identify in the daily press. Then, using the distinction between the two functions of narratives that Baroni introduced – which he calls fonction intrigante and fonction configurante –, the article will propose a new way of conceiving how narrative journalism is both fundamentally inscribed in the realm of journalism and closely connected to fiction, through the concept of plot. Finally, the article will suggest distinguishing between different approaches – connected with different ethical stances – within narrative journalism, depending on the kind of plot the narrative offers
Im Dickicht von Kultur und Narration: Albrecht Koschorke versucht Kulturtheorie und Erzählforschung zu vereinen
Get PDFAlbrecht Koschorke: Wahrheit und Erfindung. Grundzüge einer Allgemeinen Erzähltheorie. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer 2012. 480 S. EUR 24,99. ISBN 978-3-10-038911-4 Im Zeichen eines viel beschworenen narrative turn hebt man seit etwa zwei Jahrzehnten in den Geistes-, Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften hervor, dass das Erzählen zu den elementaren kulturellen Handlungsformen des Menschen gehört. Und im Zuge einer allgemeinen Öffnung für kulturwissenschaftliche Fragen interessieren sich auch die Vertreter unterschiedlicher Nationalphilologien längst nicht mehr nur für das Erzählen in Romanen und literarischen Texten, d.h., sie reflektieren Formen und Funktionen des Erzählens als, so Hayden White zu Beginn der 1980er Jahre , „panglobal fact of culture“ (1981, 1). Das neue Buch des Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaftlers Albrecht Koschorke greift diese Entwicklung und die mittlerweile bis in die Alltagssprache reichende Hochkonjunktur des Begriffs ‚Narrativ‘ auf und tritt seinerseits mit dem Anspruch an, nunmehr eine, wie der Klappentext verheißt, „Lücke zu schließen“ und die „Grundzüge“ einer „über ihren klassischen Geltungsbereich, die Literatur,“ hinausgehenden „Allgemeinen Erzähltheorie“ zu entwerfen. Aus Sicht des, so Gerald Prince im ersten Heft von DIEGESIS, „narratological tribe“ (Qiao / Prince 2012, 32) bietet Koschorkes Studie im Ergebnis, um es vorwegzunehmen, wenig neue Erkenntnisse zum Phänomen des Erzählens selbst, und sie entwirft auch keine systematisch durchdachte, die Ansätze aktueller Erzählforschung konsequent vorantreibende „Allgemeine Erzähltheorie“. Gleichwohl eröffnet sein Buch interessante Perspektiven. Seine Verdienste liegen in der originellen Zusammenschau einer Reihe von narratologischen Einsichten mit einem breiten Spektrum kulturtheoretischer Ansätze, in denen vom Erzählen bislang nicht oder nur am Rande die Rede war