Narrative Complexity: Cognition, Embodiment, Evolution (Frontiers of Narrative) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080329686X ISBN 13: 9780803296862

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2019

Synopsis

The variety in contemporary philosophical and aesthetic thinking as well as in scientific and experimental research on complexity has not yet been fully adopted by narratology. By integrating cutting-edge approaches, this volume takes a step toward filling this gap and establishing interdisciplinary narrative research on complexity.

Narrative Complexity provides a framework for a more complex and nuanced study of narrative and explores the experience of narrative complexity in terms of cognitive processing, affect, and mind and body engagement. Bringing together leading international scholars from a range of disciplines, this volume combines analytical effort and conceptual insight in order to relate more effectively our theories of narrative representation and complexities of intelligent behavior. 

This collection engages important questions on how narrative complexity functions as an agent of cultural evolution, how our understanding of narrative complexity can be extended in light of new research in the social sciences and humanities, how interactive media produce new types of narrative complexity, and how the role of embodiment as a factor of narrative complexity acquires prominence in cognitive science and media studies. The contributors explore narrative complexity transmitted through various semiotic channels, embedded in multiple contexts, and experienced across different media, including film, comics, music, interactive apps, audiowalks, and ambient literature.

 

About this title

About the Author

Marina Grishakova is a professor of comparative literature at the University of Tartu in Estonia. She is the author of The Models of Space, Time and Vision in V. Nabokov’s Fiction: Narrative Strategies and Cultural Frames and the coeditor of Intermediality and Storytelling. Maria Poulaki is a lecturer in film and digital media arts at the University of Surrey and the coeditor of Compact Cinematics: The Moving Image in the Age of Bit-Sized Media.

Review

"Grishakova . . . and Poulaki . . . bring forward prominent scholars from around the world who offer vision and new theoretical frameworks regarding narrative studies. Contributors investigate narrative complexity from varying interdisciplinary viewpoints, including sense-making via mind-body engagement and social/cultural environments via technology and media. . . . The examinations of narratives in multiple emerging media contexts alone make this a worthy read."—K. L. Majocha, Choice (K. L. Majocha Choice)

“Encyclopedic in scope, Narrative Complexity surveys a dazzling variety of genres, media forms, and theories about complexity, including artistic, literary, and scientific examples. Contributions by many eminent narratologists make this an invaluable work and essential reading for anyone interested in how the conjunction of narrative and complexity can be configured and interrogated. Kudos to the editors for introducing and assembling this remarkable collection.”—N. Katherine Hayles, author of Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious (N. Katherine Hayles 2018-09-14)

“Challenging the distinction between ‘simplicity’ as primary and primordial and ‘complexity’ as secondary and derived from simplicity, these far-ranging studies make the case that human cultures and minds are inherently complex. They are indeterminate and uncertain. This holds particularly true for narrative discourse, which is at the heart of culture and mind. Understanding homo narrans means understanding the human being in the world in its most complex forms. As a consequence, narrative studies have to refine their intellectual instruments—conceptually, empirically, hermeneutically—in the ways impressively explored in this volume.”—Jens Brockmeier, professor of psychology at the American University of Paris
  (Jens Brockmeier 2018-09-14)

“This volume opens a new window on the emergence of narratology within the context of complexity theory. In contrast to its phase of pluralization in the form of diverse models and paradigms, narratology, by turning to complex phenomena such as self-organization, nonlinearity, recursion, and nonhierarchical relations in various media, is exploring new domains where the interactions between embodied cognition and social and cultural embeddedness are redefining the contours of narrative. Narrative Complexity bears witness to the repositioning of the ‘conditions of possibility’ of narratology.”—John Pier, University of Tours and CRAL (CNRS), Paris (John Pier 2018-09-14)

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 080329686X
• ISBN 13: 9780803296862
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 468
• Editor: Grishakova Marina, Poulaki Maria