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Reading People, Reading Plots: Character, Progression, and the Interpretation of Narrative
... James Phelan (1989) attempts to solve the ambivalence of characters as an analogue of persons and as textual functions by distinguishing three different dimensions, which he considers the attributes that characters possess in isolation from the work in which the characters appear, and from which the text derives its significance (9). The first dimensions he calls "synthetic": characters are constructs from text and are thereby artificial (10). ...
... (2012) The narrator functions to communicate characters, their personalities and the events in which they appear. James Phelan (2005) calls the act of communicating characters character narration, in which "an author communicates to her audience by means of the character narrator's communication to a narratee" (1). The author and the audience are positions to be filled in by actual persons. ...
This study presents a theory about dynamic game characters within a broader character ecology in
which characters are constantly produced and reproduced in a variety of media. Characters do not
appear only in games, they migrate from one medium to another. They are independent from any
medium in particular: a character does not require a specific medium to come into existence.
Authoritative forces try to shape the overall interpretation of circulating characters transmedially in
comics, television series, films, games and more through different venues of control, such as
authorship, canonisation and ownership or intellectual property. This study addresses the struggle
for interpretive authority by explaining how the player constructs the identity of dynamic game
characters in digital games, and by discussing how dynamic game characters connect to and
influence other character manifestations within a broader media ecology in which characters
circulate.
The research question of this study is: What are dynamic game characters? Through reader�response theory adapted for cybermedia phenomena such as games, this study approaches
characters as a player-constructed phenomenon, in which the game character needs the player in
order to be invoked, but the game encourages the meaning-making process with different means
to different effects. Dynamic game characters are those game characters whose development
structures branch into different outcomes, each of which are undetermined until the player
actualises one or more possibilities that steer that direction onto distinct paths with a specific
outcome.
Dynamic game characters have become a phenomenon that challenges practices of
(trans-)media control. A theory of dynamic game characters tells us about the migration of entities
via different works, and how the perceiver comes to understand them within a context saturated
with characters, stories and a variety of media platforms. Digital games are just one of the many
media platforms that participate in this character ecology, and they allow characters to challenge
the idea that within a single piece of work the character must maintain a linear, continuous and
coherent identity that stretches the understanding of characters as authored and predictable within
a single work.
This study argues that dynamic game characters are a type of quasi-person in digital games
whose development consists of multiple outcomes. Digital games accelerate a dynamic game
character’s identity within a single work, unlike non-cybermedia in which a character’s identity is
constructed over multiple works. They challenge venues of control, because the player has creative
agency over the dynamic game character’s characterisation process within a single work. However,
once dynamic game characters transfer to other works, authoritative institutions break the player’s
participation in the dynamic game character’s development. These transfers sacrifice player
participation to create the illusion of a coherent identity between the manifestations of the
character over multiple works
... 7 See for example Kukkonen (2014 : 737) ; Herman (2009 : 20-21) ; Baroni (2009 : 45-94 ;2017 : 52-62 remains subject to a somewhat discouraging polysemy 9 . I will not attempt to argue here that it would be better to adopt what James Phelan and Peter Rabinowitz (2012: 57) have called a "maximalist" definition of plot, or to explain why progression -a notion introduced by Phelan (1989) -is useless as long as we do not confuse plot with the internal logic of the fabula. My point here will be to highlight the mutability of a concept that has been defined alternatively: 1) as a static image of the story (or fabula); 2) as the reconfiguration of the story by narrative discourse (or syuzhet); 3) as a strategic combination of this double sequence aimed at arousing narrative tension 10 (the three main narrative interests being suspense, curiosity, or surprise) 11 ; 4) or, last but not least, as an evolving storyworld, a mental experience relying on the progression of the reader. ...
... Such axes are therefore probably 9 I discuss this polysemy in Baroni (2017 : 25-36). 10 See Baroni (2007;2017), Phelan (1989), Brooks (1983). 11 See Sternberg (2001). ...
In narrative theory, looking at the changing relationship between characters and plots is a good way to account for the evolution of the discipline over the years. While debates concerning other issues-like narrativity, implied author, optional narrator, or focalization-at times appear to have frozen in some kind of Cold War-with front lines that have moved very little over the years-the way we look at the interconnection between fictional entities and the unfolding of plot has changed quite dramatically over the last few decades. This evolution is obvious if we examine a recent discussion between Thomas Pavel and Françoise Lavocat. Asked why she chose to write a book on possible world theory and the difference between fact and fiction 1 , Françoise Lavocat recalls how she discovered, in the mid 1990s, the famous essay by Thomas Pavel, Univers de la fiction: One evening that I remember very well, in February 1996, I began to read Univers de la fiction, which an analytical philosopher had advised me. I read from the very first page-which evokes Mr Pickwick-that we have the right to love characters. With this authorization, ten years of structuralism collapsed all of a sudden. In preparatory school, I had learned that characters were made of paper and that it would be very naive to picture them in another way. I read in Thomas Pavel's book that we have the right to be naive. 2 (Lavocat & Pavel 2016: n.p.) Thomas Pavel replies by saying that, when he began working on possible world theory, in the seventies, he felt quite alone: You remind me of the 1970s when the few people who had begun to think about these questions felt a little like three or four friends on an excursion into the Rocky Mountains, spending nights in easily foldable tents. Forty years later, studies on fiction seem to have reached the size of a vast metropolis, with its enormous skyscrapers. The landscape has changed a lot! At the time, we were told that what counted in Madame Bovary was the use of free indirect speech. It was certainly not false. Now, I read Madame Bovary to follow the life of the characters, to learn, for example, what will become of this unwise woman, who, among other things, buys dresses too costly for her budget. We were told that it was stupid to read novels simply to understand the plot. 3 (Lavocat & Pavel 2016: n.p.) 1 See Lavocat (2016). 2 « Un soir dont je m'en souviens très bien, en février 1996, je me suis mise à lire Univers de la fiction, qu'un philosophe analytique m'avait conseillé. Je lis, dès la première page-qui évoque Mr Pickwick-qu'on a le droit d'aimer les personnages. Avec cette autorisation, dix ans de structuralisme s'effondrent tout d'un coup. En khâgne, j'avais appris que les personnages étaient de papier et qu'il était vraiment naïf de les envisager d'une autre façon. Je lis dans le livre de Thomas Pavel qu'on a le droit d'être naïf. » 3 « Vous me rappelez les années 1970, lorsque les quelques personnes qui avaient commencé à réfléchir à ces questions se sentaient un peu comme trois ou quatre amis en excursion dans les Montagnes Rocheuses et qui passent les nuits dans des tentes facilement pliables. Quarante ans plus tard, les études sur la fiction semblent avoir atteint la dimension d'une vaste métropole avec ses énormes gratte-ciels. Le paysage a beaucoup changé ! À l'époque, on nous apprenait que ce qui comptait dans Madame Bovary, c'était l'emploi du discours indirect libre. Ce n'était certes pas faux. Or moi je lisais Madame Bovary pour suivre la vie les
... Beyond the substantial body of research on the representation of characters in literary texts (see, e. g., Jannidis 2004;Phelan 1989;Schneider 2000) and films (see, e. g., Eder 2008a;Smith 1995;Tomasi 1988), recent years have also increasingly seen the emergence of theoretical work on characters in other media, from comics (see, e. g., Aldama 2010; Varis 2019) via television series (see, e. g., Mittell 2015: 118-163;Pearson and Davies 2014: 149-184) to video games (see, e. g., Schröter and Thon 2014;Vella 2015). While there are differences between the ways in which literary texts, comics, films, television series, video games, and other conventionally distinct media forms represent characters, at first glance there seems to be a broad consensus that characters cannot be reduced to "textual effects" or "actantial functions" (see, e. g., Greimas 1983;Propp 1968;Tomasi 1988), but should be understood as "textor media-based figure [s] in a storyworld, usually human or humanlike" (Jannidis 2014: 30). ...
... For further discussion of why we should not conflate what nonfictional representations represent with the "actual world," see, e. g., Thon 2014, Thon 2019 Which leaves us with the question to what extent our conceptualization of characters should require them to be entities located in a represented world or storyworld 3 of some sort. It seems safe to say that this is, either explicitly or implicitly, a very common part of current conceptualizations of characters, particularly in the context of the theory of fiction and/or narratological approaches to character analysis (see, e. g., Jannidis 2004;Eder 2008aEder , 2008bPhelan 1989). At the same time, however, this question leads us into the core conceptual and terminological quagmire of much current research on characters across media, namely that the term "character" as well as names such as "Sherlock Holmes," "Batman," or "Lara Croft" are used to refer to two very different kinds of phenomena, only one of which could be appropriately described as represented entities with an intentional inner life that are located in storyworlds. ...
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 .
... What Genette calls intradiegetic narratee, Gerald Prince calls character-narratee (1996). For a similar distinction James Phelan (1989) is content to use the terms of narrative audience and authorial audience proposed by Peter Rabinowitz (1977). Because the authorial audience understanding of Rabinowitz and Phelan includes both the implied reader and the narratee, the term intradiegetic narratee will be employed in this paper. ...
The Ballad of the Sad Café by Carson McCullers presents a unique narrative situation with a narrator who may be called communal, because he identifies himself with the townspeople, narrates what is known by them, and his knowledge of the events and the characters are limited to the geographical limits of the town. As a balladeer he narrates an event that concerns the townspeople. However, his narration conceals certain aspects of the story from the narratee who is a visitor or a stranger from out of town. What the narration hides is that the owners of the only café at the town, namely Miss Amelia Evans and Cousin Lymon are gay. The narrator does not make any statements as to their sexual identity though such a sexual preference is never tolerated in a conservative Southern town where Amelia lives. In this case, the townspeople and the narrator ignore this idea about Amelia and Lymon, as they have an indispensable importance for people. The narrative act which hides as much as it reveals can be deciphered correctly only when the unique narrative situation is recognized.
... James Phelan (1989), ao argumentar sobre a construção de personagens, aponta para das dimensões constitutivas: a mimética, que personifica, imita a ação; a sintética, definida a partir dos traços e aspectos que adjetivam um personagem; e a terceira, a temática, surge na progressão da obra a partir da funcionalização de aspectos das duas primeiras dimensões. Ou seja, cada personagem recebe um conjunto de traços, que podem ou não se transformar ao longo do percurso, gerando conflitos e tensões que fazem a história progredir e afetam seus níveis mimético e temático. ...
Por meio da comparação de aspectos do enredo de duas séries de ficção, Boca a Boca (Netflix, 2020) e As five (Globoplay, 2020), este texto explora como as possíveis semelhanças ou diferenças em tal estrutura permitem reflexões sobre a atuação de serviços de vídeo sob demanda que operam no Brasil. Para tanto, empreendemos uma análise do sistema de narração para explorar os modos de apresentação dos eventos na trama, ou seja, o modo pelo qual as informações narrativas são distribuídas; o gênero pregnante das séries, sua principal linha de ação e o modo como os temas se articulam ao enredo e aos personagens na progressão da história.
... Há de se considerar ainda os modos de construção da personagem e as funções estabelecidas que colaboram para a progressão narrativa e para a abertura de mundos além dos limites diegéticos da telenovela. Phelan (1989) oferece como possibilidade a discussão sobre as dimensões mimética, sintética e temática dos personagens que, articuladas, exercem funções e atuam na progressão da história em relações de causalidade (RCOHA et al, 2021). A primeira refere-se à imitação da ação no universo dramático da narrativa. ...
O artigo busca fazer uma análise das potencialidades e limitações da estratégia transmidiática de Vivi Guedes, na telenovela A Dona do Pedaço (2019), considerando as interações no perfil do Instagram da personagem com os modos de distribuição da informação e integração de universos narrativos operadas pelo enredo e pelo estilo. Para isso, utilizamos exemplos pontuais de eventos, cenas e postagens ocorridos durante a exibição da telenovela e nos apoiamos em discussões sobre dinâmicas transmídia e modo clássico de narração, que dialogam com o objeto empírico escolhido. Concluímos que, embora a utilização de uma extensão transmídia seja um recurso integrativo à narrativa da personagem, a partir de seus valores, relações com outros personagens e com sua profissão, é observável um rendimento interativo modesto no que se refere à participação da audiência na telenovela como um todo.
... Ο James Phelan υποστηρίζει πως ο λογοτεχνικός χαρακτήρας αναπτύσσεται και αλλάζει, καθώς αναπτύσσεται η πλοκή, ενώ ως ένα λογοτεχνικό στοιχείο αποτελείται από τρία συστατικά: το μιμητικό, το συνθετικό και το θεματικό. 20 Το μιμητικό συστατικό αναφέρεται στον τρόπο με τον οποίο ένας χαρακτήρας μπορεί να είναι η εικόνα ενός πραγματικού και πιθανού ατόμου. Το συνθετικό συστατικό αφορά την τεχνητότητα του χαρακτήρα, ότι δηλαδή είναι ένα λογοτεχνικό κατασκεύασμα. ...
... Ως εκδοχές, όμως, των πιθανών κόσμων της μυθοπλασίας διαθέτουν τα προσδιοριστικά στοιχεία των παράλληλων κόσμων της πραγματικότητάς μας: την ύπαρξη, την ταυτότητα, τη μοναδικότητα, ανθρώπινα χαρακτηριστικά και ιδιότητες, την ένταξή τους σε ένα ευρύτερο σύνολο ανθρώπινων όντων (Margolin, 1987. Ενεργοποιούν, δηλαδή, χαρακτηριστικά γνωρίσματα που, αν και πολλές φορές συσσωρεύονται για χάρη της μυθοπλασίας, παραπέμπουν σε πραγματικούς ανθρώπους και τους μιμούνται• προβάλλουν ατομικά ή συλλογικά γνωρίσματα μέσω των οποίων γίνονται φορείς ιδεών και αξιών που τις θεματοποιούν• κατασκευάζονται από τα αισθητικά υλικά (όνομα, ρόλοι, κ.ά.) που υπάρχουν στους αληθινούς χαρακτήρες (Phelan, 1989), ενώ ένας ολόκληρος μυθοπλαστικός κόσμος συγκροτείται από σύνολα οντοτήτων και από τις μεταξύ τους σχέσεις (Ronen, 1994: 8). Το όλο ζήτημα, λοιπόν, της εννοιολόγησης των χαρακτήρων και της δυναμικής επίδρασής τους στους εφηβικούς μυθοπλαστικούς κόσμους επαναφέρει πολύ έντονα το κύριο ζητούμενο της μελέτης κάθε λογοτεχνικού κειμένου, δηλαδή τη σχέση μυθοπλασίας-πραγματικότητας. ...
... The third deviation relates to the classical model by its unusual priorities, a kind of diluted protagonism in which characters not only have dense and complex individual arcs but also solve their dramatic turns in different ways. James Phelan (1989) points to three constitutive dimensions of character construction: the mimetic personifies and imitates the action; the synthetic constitutes characters by their traits and aspects; the thematic results from the functionalization of the two as the plot progresses, i.e., each character has a set of traits which may or may not change along the way, generating conflicts and tensions pushing the story forward and affecting its mimetic and thematic levels. ...
El monográfico!La ficción televisiva latinoamericana en tiempos de cambio (2015-2021) pretende ser una mirada plural y crítica sobre la ficción televisiva latinoamericana, que se articula en dos segmentos. El primero alude a las narrativas y está integrado por tres artículos, que exploran otras tantas dimensiones de la producción chilena (la recuperación de la memoria social), mexicana (el postfeminismo) y brasileña (los cambios inducidos por Netflix) respectivamente. Los artículos del segundo grupo giran alrededor de la nueva ecológica digital de los medios, que de manera sistemática ha tenido un impacto en las dinámicas de produccion, distribución, pro moción y consumo de la ficción en la televisión.
... The third deviation relates to the classical model by its unusual priorities, a kind of diluted protagonism in which characters not only have dense and complex individual arcs but also solve their dramatic turns in different ways. James Phelan (1989) points to three constitutive dimensions of character construction: the mimetic personifies and imitates the action; the synthetic constitutes characters by their traits and aspects; the thematic results from the functionalization of the two as the plot progresses, i.e., each character has a set of traits which may or may not change along the way, generating conflicts and tensions pushing the story forward and affecting its mimetic and thematic levels. ...
In this article, we seek to highlight and discuss some changes observed in Brazilian Netflix series since 2016 that play an important role in the complexity of the productions. Those changes are expansions in the classical narrative and plot model, with consequent changes in the strategies of information distribution, the effect on how viewer attention is gained and the thematic development of the productions. Regarding the methodology, we adopted a poetic reading based on David Bordwell's considerations on the classical storytelling model. We concluded that the expansions contributed to a greater demand for viewer attention, in addition to encouraging a diversity of points of view and greater complexity of the theme.
... A dimensão mimética, de acordo comPhelan (1989), diz respeito à personificação -seja individual, seja de entidades. Há grande quantidade de trabalhos que se debruçam sobre essa dimensão, especialmente no campo da performance. ...
Partindo das características e revisões do modelo clássico de narração, tal como apresentadas por David Bordwell (1985), este artigo tem como objetivo evidenciar expansões de tais normas identificadas nos jogos narrativos de distribuição e de lacunas de informação na busca pela atenção do espectador em três obras coproduzidas pela Netflix no Brasil: 3% (2016-2020), Coisa Mais Linda (2019-2020) e Boca a Boca (2020). Destacamos duas possíveis expansões: i) a antecipação, amplitude e disrupção do incidente incitante e ii) o deslocamento da linha principal de ação. Buscamos entender a primeira enquanto uma lógica de continuidade intensificada das normas de storytelling. E exploramos a segunda a partir da inserção de um núcleo de protagonistas que alterna a focalização da atenção de modo equilibrado, fazendo com que os aspectos que os compõem e seus entrelaçamentos ofereçam aberturas tanto para a tessitura do tema quanto para a emergência de diferentes perspectivas sobre o mesmo. Palavras-chave: Expansão das normas de storytelling. Netflix Brasil. Conquista atencional.
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Starting from the characteristics and revisions of the classic narration model, as presented by David Bordwell (1985), this article aims to show expansions of such norms identified in the narrative games of distribution and information gaps in the search for the viewer's attention in three works co-produced by Netflix in Brazil: 3% (2016-2020), Coisa Mais Linda (2019-2020) and Boca a Boca (2020). We highlighted two possible expansions: i) the anticipation, extent and disruption of the inciting incident and ii) the displacement of the main line of action. We seek to understand the first as a logic of an intensified continuity of storytelling norms. And we explore the second from the insertion of a core of protagonists that alternates the focus of attention in a balanced way, so that their composing aspects and intertwinings offer openings, both for the thematic weaving and for the emergence of different perspectives on it.
... As the primary driving force in narratives, individual character's traits and behaviours, which are strongly associated with the events that occur throughout the story, are closely examined. According to Phelan (1989), plot is progressed by instabilities that occurred within prose. Similarly, characters are mental products of "complex interaction between the incoming textual information" and the readers or audiences' prior knowledge (Culpeper, 2002, p.251). ...
Learning English literature has always been a challenge, as it demands advanced analytical skills, especially when learners are expected to critically analyse and discuss literary texts. Character mapping is proposed as a technique that develops analytical and critical thinking skills among learners. Drawing theoretical basis from cognitive science, constructivism, and cognitive stylistics, character mapping helps learners visualise connections between characters and events in a literary narrative, which then allows better comprehension of the literary text. 18 respondents from a Form 4 secondary school in Sabah, Malaysia, participated in a small-scale action research study. First, their previous experiences learning English literature was extrapolated via a need analysis, after which the respondents were then exposed to character mapping and its underlying principles. Then, they were asked to reflect and provide feedback on their experiences learning English literature using character maps. The feedback indicated positive support from the respondents, suggesting that character mapping can help learners learn English literature more effectively. Key observations include enhanced levels of comprehension, engagement, creativity, memory retention and organisation of thoughts. Two negative feedback were observed: (i) character mapping is time-consuming, and (ii) overusing character mapping might impede learning engagement. Future studies need to recruit larger sample population and potentially an experimental paradigm to investigate the impact of character mapping in greater detail.
... (b) Personens mimetiske komponent består av de trekkene som gjør at man, gjerne over tid, danner seg et bilde av «denne bestemte (fiktive) personen»; «the character as person». (c) Ved den tematiske komponenten finner vi at den fiktive personen også fungerer som et tegn som inngår i en større helhet av andre intensjonale tegn, og slik representerer en tanke eller en mening; «the character as idea» (Phelan, 1989(Phelan, , s. 2-3, 1996. Inndelingen er et nyttig verktøy, som vi her vil bruke for å identifisere elevenes analytiske fokus. ...
Artikkelens formål er å undersøke hvordan elever initierer og utvikler sekvenser av utforskende dialog i elevstyrte litterære samtaler om to ungdomsromaner fra fritidskulturen. Bakgrunn for artikkelen er blant annet et ønske om bedre å forstå hvordan antatt interesse for og innlevelse i selvvalgte fritidstekster påvirker substansen i elevers litterære samtaler. Artikkelens empiriske grunnlag er analyser av lydopptak av litterære samtaler gjennomført av to grupper av elever på niende trinn, som del av en treårig studie av omfattende bruk av litterære samtaler på ungdomstrinnet. Det teoretiske grunnlaget består av transaksjonsteori (Jeffrey D. Wilhelm), teori om litterære samtaler og utforskende dialog (Harvey Daniels, Nancy Steineke, Neil Mercer, Douglas Barnes). Analysens sentrale funn er at utforskende dialoger her i hovedsak initieres av elevenes interesse for og innlevelse i de fiktive personenes mimetiske komponent og utvikles gjennom utveksling av perspektiver som også berører de fiktive personenes tematiske komponent. Elevenes skolering i litterære samtaler framstår også som en sentral medvirkende faktor.
... Elle trouve son origine dans l'analyse par Aristote de la catharsis. Dans un contexte plus récent, elle se rattache également à la tradition fonctionnaliste ou rhétorique, illustrée notamment par les travaux de Meir Sternberg 5 ou de James Phelan 6 . On peut mentionner également l'approche psychanalytique de Peter Brooks 7 , qui associe la dynamique de l'intrigue à une véritable érotique de la lecture, ou l'approche cognitiviste de Marie-Laure Ryan 8 . ...
... En revanche, Baroni affirme que si la propriété essentielle de l'intrigue consiste en l'établissement d'une tension qui noue la représentation et qui, éventuellement, sera résolue dans le dénouement (que ce soit par le récit chronologique d'un « conflit » ou par d'autres moyens), il devient dès lors beaucoup plus aisé de retrouver cette « structuration expressive » au niveau de la séquence musicale. Pour reprendre la dichotomie bien connue de Tomachevski, dans cette perspective -que l'on pourrait appeler, à la suite de Meir Sternberg (1992) et de James Phelan (1989), une approche « rhétorique » ou « fonctionnelle », et que l'on a parfois labellisée comme « postclassique » de manière à souligner sa différence par rapport aux modèles structuraux en vogues durant l'âge d'or de la narratologie française 3 -, ce n'est plus la forme logique de la fabula qui représente le coeur de l'intrigue, mais l'intensité de la représentation (chronologique ou non) qui se manifeste lorsqu'un lecteur ou un auditeur progresse dans le sujet, orienté par ce que l'on peut appeler, à la suite de Ricoeur, des « dissonances » (1983 : 139) qui portent en elles la promesse ou l'espoir d'une résolution. ...
... 45 For discussion of the misunderstanding of Barthes, see Goldhill 1990. 46 On narrative progression as fundamental for the construction of character, see also Phelan 1987Phelan , 1989aPhelan : 1-23, 26-60, 165-188, 1989b A non-exhaustive list: Margolin 1983Margolin , 1986Margolin , 1987Margolin , 1989Margolin , 1990aMargolin , 1990bMargolin , 1995aMargolin , 1995bMargolin , 1996Margolin , 2003Margolin , 2007 Possible worlds theory has been used by critics particularly with respect to the problematic ontological status of characters. The theory allows scholars to circumvent this problem by postulating that characters in literature are non-actual individuals (but individuals nevertheless). ...
... Le dénouement n'est pas une structure symétrique qui s'oppose au noeud, mais un horizon d'attente créé par ce dernier, ce qui explique qu'il peut être indéfiniment repoussé, comme dans les formes feuilletonnantes ou dans les oeuvres «ouvertes» évoquées par Umberto Eco (1979). L'analyse de la structure cède donc la place à celle des fonctions discursives et des intérêts narratifs liés à la progression dans le texte, ce qui implique, sur un plan linguistique ou poétique, de prendre en compte le rôle fondamental joué par la manière dont l'information narrative est distribuée dans le récit (Phelan 1989 ;Sternberg 1992 ;Brooks 1992 ;Baroni 2007 ;2017a ;Kukkonen 2014a). ...
Dans le champ de la didactique de la littérature, l'attention portée aux expériences des sujets lecteurs a eu le mérite de revaloriser des rapports aux textes plus personnels et passionnels, moins inféodés à des techniques d'analyse qui risqueraient de nous détourner de l'essentiel, c'est-à-dire du plaisir esthétique et de l'expérience immersive où se jouent certains enjeux éthiques fondamentaux des fictions narratives. En dépit de son indéniable intérêt, cette orientation sur la dimension expérientielle ou subjective de la lecture a eu néanmoins la fâcheuse conséquence de marginaliser les réflexions portant sur les outils d'analyse qui relèvent de la poétique ou, plus précisément, de ce courant de la théorie littéraire identifié comme la narratologie. Dans le champ de la didactique, on risque en effet de considérer la théorie du récit avec méfiance du fait de sa réputation formaliste et de son lien supposé avec un paradigme structuraliste jugé caduque et desséchant pour la lecture. Cela explique en partie le peu d'attention porté au travail de transmission d'un outillage conceptuel qui vise pourtant à enrichir le commentaire des oeuvres, et quand bien même ce genre d'enseignement demeure fréquent, et même souvent central dans les plans d'étude actuels, surtout au niveau des deuxième et troisième cycles. Si l'on accepte le principe selon lequel l'analyse textuelle ne saurait se satisfaire d'un commentaire purement intuitif ou subjectif , il est étrange que l'on ne se préoccupe pas davantage, notamment au niveau de la formation des enseignant·e·s, de la nature de ces outils et de la manière dont ils sont enseignés, comme si l'affaire était entendue depuis longtemps, et qu'il suffisait de se reposer sur un corpus notionnel usuel et des définitions standardisées. Toutes les conditions sont donc réunies pour produire une dangereuse circularité fondée sur un recyclage non problématisé de savoirs acquis sur le tas, à travers l'enseignement obligatoire et post-obligatoire, la lecture de quelques «classiques» de la théorie (surtout Genette), d'ouvrages de synthèses ou de manuels. Tout au plus, les futurs enseignant·e·s sont-ils/elles mis en garde contre un excès de formalisme, comme si théorie et plaisirs esthétiques étaient nécessairement antinomiques. Mais si l'on accepte de voir la narratologie non comme un «moment» de l'histoire de la théorie littéraire, mais bien comme une discipline à part entière, à l'instar de la linguistique ou de la stylistique, c'est-à-dire comme un courant de pensée traversé par différents paradigmes épistémologiques et par des débats parfois intenses entre des positions antagonistes, peut-être découvrira-ton que cette dernière offre des ressources critiques beaucoup plus riches que les notions figées dont héritent les enseignant·e·s. N'est-il pas alors dommageable de faire l'économie d'une réflexion didactique sur le choix des notions.
... Descriptions of characters in fictional worlds differ in important ways from individuals' descriptions of themselves or other people. Characters in fictional works are not real people, and they function beyond being mere representations of people to embody and further the plot and themes of a narrative (Phelan, 1989). Literary theorists have emphasized alternatively how characters are mere linguistic constructs and how they elicit affective investments that prompt us to relate to them in the same way that we relate to real people. ...
We present a new method for personality assessment at a distance to uncover personality structure in historical texts. We focus on how two 19th century authors understood and described human personality; we apply a new bottom‐up computational approach to extract personality dimensions used by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens to describe fictional characters in 21 novels. We matched personality descriptions using three person‐description dictionaries marker scales as reference points for interpretation. Factor structures did not show strong convergence with the contemporary Big Five model. Jane Austen described characters in terms of social and emotional richness with greater nuances but using a less extensive vocabulary. Charles Dickens, in contrast, used a rich and diverse personality vocabulary, but those descriptions centred around more restricted dimensions of power and dominance. Although we could identify conceptually similar factors across the two authors, analyses of the overlapping vocabulary between the two authors suggested only moderate convergence. We discuss the utility and potential of automated text analysis and the lexical hypothesis to (i) provide insights into implicit personality models in historical texts and (ii) bridge the divide between idiographic and nomothetic perspectives. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology
... Ricoeur 1983, Phelan 1989, Brooks 1992, Sternberg 1993, Baroni 2007, Abbott 2007, Kukkonen 2014). La grande nouveauté du travail de Raphaël Baroni, c'est qu'il entreprend de décrire ces dispositifs en adoptant « une démarche intégrative » (RI, 182) : en effet, il met à profit pour mener à bien son projet des acquis théoriques issus de la narratologie classique (axée sur la structure des récits fictifs), la narratologie postclassique (axée sur l'articulation des structures narratives avec le contexte historique, les significations visées, la dynamique de la narration, le rôle du récepteur etc.), la linguistique textuelle et énonciative, la psycholinguistique, la poétique des mondes possibles, la didactique de la littérature etc. Malgré certaines imperfections de détail liées à des partis pris théoriques qui seront questionnés plus loin, cette démonstration constitue une avancée importante dans le domaine de la théorie littéraire, et ce pour deux raisons. ...
... Thus, to summarize Phelan's theory in another way, the category of characterness binds agential narrative functions and illusory humanity together, so that the readers are compelled to humanize agential textual constructions as well as to expect narrative agency from such textual constructions that manifest human-like traits. Furthermore, it would seem that placing a different amount of interest and emphasis on these two aspects -the synthetic and the mimetic aspects of character (Phelan 1989) -forms the main fault-line between natural and unnatural narratology's approaches to nonhuman minds. ...
... mances but also in audiovisual media such as films or interactive media such as video games (see, e.g., Jannidis 2004;Phelan 1989; Schneider 2000 on literary characters ;Eder 2008;Smith 1995;Tomasi 1988 on film characters; Schröter and Thon 2014; Vella 2014 on video game characters; Aldama 2010; Vari 2019 on comic book characters; as well as the various contributions in Eder et al. 2010 b; Leschke and Heidbrink 2010 for perspectives on characters in other media such as television series, theatrical performances, advertisement etc.). These various medium-specific approaches often consider characters to be "elements of the constructed narrative world" (Eder et al. 2010 a: 9) or "non-actual but well-specified individual presumed to exist in some hypothetical, fictional domain" (Margolin 2007: 66). ...
... We want to lend support to attempts made to blend these two traditions by building on a cognitive-rhetorical theory of literary characters. Within rhetorical narratology, James Phelan (1989Phelan ( , 2007 has long argued for the presence of three different aspects to fictional texts: the mimetic, the thematic and the synthetic. These aspects also form for Phelan the components of character, allowing characters to be a) life-like, b) representative of the central idea of the fiction, and c) to function as parts of the artefact constructed by the author. ...
This article examines recent theories of fictional characters, and raises the issue of how far characters can be understood with reference to human intersubjectivity. On the one hand, empirical research based on theories of rhetorical narrative ethics shows that phenomena such as sympathy and empathy are very relevant for the ways readers describe their imaginative connection with fictional characters. On the other hand, traditional narratology emphasizes that readers also engage with fiction as an artefact. This article focuses on the similarities and differences in these two conceptions of what engagement with fictional characters is, and asks how much of what readers get out of fiction depends on what is portrayed, and how much is the product of their enactment of form. Building on some yet unpublished results of an empirical testing conducted earlier by Sklar, as well as narratological and cognitive analyses of the concept of character, we examine our respective theoretical intuitions and set out a cognitive-rhetorical position that we both share. In that process we also clarify the ways in which cognitive literary studies can speak to the larger purpose of reading.
Both traditional and new‐wave mentoring (or men‐toring), intentionally or unintentionally, maintain and reproduce neoliberal toxic masculinist norms in academia. By applying femme theory and critical femininities frameworks, we expose how men‐toring is exclusionary and assimilationist. We then queer and feminize mentoring, developing femme‐toring as an alternative reformist approach rooted in fem(me)inist epistemologies and ethics of care, in particular, softness, vulnerability, collaboration, and yielding. Leveraging systems theory and Foucauldian theory, we contend that by centering femininity in these ways, femme‐toring unsettles toxic masculinist norms and offers possibilities for a more inclusive academia.
The dissertation, titled Through the Eyes of a Child and subtitled The Child as a Literary Subject in Contemporary Italian Prose, attempts to map and describe the recurring presence of a child protagonist in contemporary Italian prose for adult readers. Drawing on the corpus of twenty novels spanning from 1997 to 2017, it shows how the prism of children manifested itself in Italian novels of that period.
The thesis is divided into five chapters: theoretical, historical, analytical, synthetic, and a conclusion. The first chapter clarifies what a literary subject is, and through the prism of the narratological theory of Gérard Genette and his followers Mieke Bal and Sklomith Rimmon-Kennan, she defines three basic subject roles (narrator, focalizer, character) that a child occupies in a narrative. The second chapter shows when and how a child protagonist first made appearance in the history of Italian literature. The third chapter focuses on the narratological analysis of the novels in question, which, with the help of the theoretical terms established in the first chapter, divides them into two groups: novels with a heterodiegetic narrator, in which the child acts as a focal subject, and novels with an autodiegetic narrator, in which the child is sometimes only a focalizer, but at other times their focalizing activity may merge with that of the narrator. The group of novels with a heterodiegetic narrator includes the novels Dei bambini non si sa niente and Brother & Sister by Simona Vinci, the novels Ti prendo e ti porto via, Come dio comanda and Anna by Niccolò Ammaniti, the novel City by Alessandro Baricco, the novel Certi bambini by Diego de Silva, and further novels like: L'Esatta sequenza dei gesti by Fabio Geda, Sei come sei by Melania G. Mazzucco, Tina by Alessio Torino and La paranza dei bambini by Roberto Saviano. On the contrary, the part dedicated to novels with an autodiegetic narrator includes: Io non ho paura and Io e te Niccolò Ammaniti, Margherita Dolcevita by Stefano Benni, Per il resto del viaggio ho sparato agli indiani and Nel mare ci sono i coccodrilli by Fabio Geda, La prima vera bugia by Marina Mander, Il tempo materiale by Giorgio Vasta, Chi manda le onde by Fabio Genovesi and L'Arminuta by Donatella Di Pietrantonio. The fourth section then deals with the content of the focalizing activity of the child subject, identifying six basic themes that are essential from a child protagonist’s perspective in contemporary Italian prose: a dysfunctional relationship with mother and father; relationships between siblings that can be a rescue from a complex family situation; the need to belong to a group, to find a kindred spirit; but also a world full of evil and violence, or death. In the conclusion, four ways in which a child's point of view is formally presented in contemporary Italian prose are described, as well as the effects that the choice of a child subject to tell about complex and painful topics can have on the reader.
This chapter provides a close reading of three comic books that feature sleeper agents in very different forms. The first analysis looks closely into the implications of double identities for the conceptualization of fictional characters in Marvel’s Secret Invasion (2007–2008) and argues for the sleeper agent as hybrid character. The second analysis discusses several representations of subjectivity for brainwashed characters in DC’s Batman & Robin Eternal (2015–2016) and shows how the possibility of mind control is used to question an autonomous self. The third analysis investigates intertextual connections and ambiguous images in Dark Horse’s Mind MGMT (2012–2015) which mirror the topic of duplicity and hidden conspiracies on a formal level.
Concentrating on Doris drar (Doris Leaves, 2015), Pudlar och pommes (Poodles and Fries, 2016), and Vitvivan och Gullsippan (Vitvivan and Gullsippan, 2021), this article explores how Pija Lindenbaum utilizes the artistic possibilities of the picturebook medium to communicate with the child reader. Following James Phelan, my investigation goes beyond a static and universal understanding of narratives to seeing them as context-determined and composed in relation to a rhetorical audience. Mike Cadden points out that this rhetorical turn is particularly striking when it comes to children’s literature, as the targeted reader by definition is a child and narratives for children often use specific strategies for more or less well-defined purposes. Taking my cue from rhetorical approaches to literature, I argue that a focus on plots and conflicts enhances our understanding of reading as ethical meaning-making. Conflicts in modern children’s literature are regularly perceived from the child’s point of view in ways that are essential for the transaction of meaning. In my terminology, the conflict constitutes an aesthetic-pedagogical node connecting the reader with the evaluative perspective of the narrative. Addressing the dynamics between text, image, and medium in Lindenbaum’s picturebooks, this article argues that plots and conflicts are pivotal for the reader’s involvement, directing interest and emotional engagement. The plot not only invites the reader to the fictional world, but it also stimulates a context-bound meaning-making involving thoughts, feelings, and values.
Seneca's Characters addresses one of the most enduring and least theorised elements of literature: fictional character and its relationship to actual, human selfhood. Where does the boundary between character and person lie? While the characters we encounter in texts are obviously not 'real' people, they still possess person-like qualities that stimulate our attention and engagement. How is this relationship formulated in contexts of theatrical performance, where characters are set in motion by actual people, actual bodies and voices? This book addresses such questions by focusing on issues of coherence, imitation, appearance and autonomous action. It argues for the plays' sophisticated treatment of character, their acknowledgement of its purely fictional ontology alongside deep – and often dark – appreciation of its quasi-human qualities. Seneca's Characters offers a fresh perspective on the playwright's powerful tragic aesthetics that will stimulate scholars and students alike.
Zusammenfassung
Der Beitrag möchte eine orientierende Skizze zur historischen Genese des erzähltheoretischen und narratologischen Figurenkonzepts anbieten, dessen moderne Verengung am Leitfaden der historischen Semantik des Deutschen kritisiert wird. Im Zusammenspiel von Wort‑, Begriffs- und Theoriegeschichte ergibt sich der Befund, dass es sich bei Phänomen und Begriff der narrativen Figur um ein oszillierendes Doppelkonzept der historischen Medialität zwischen Stimme und Blick handeln dürfte. Gegenüber seinem ästhetischen Potential greifen demnach Modelle zu kurz, die sich der Intensität der Kippbewegung zugunsten einer eindeutigen terminologischen Fixierung verschließen, obwohl sie schon begriffsgeschichtlich von ihrem eigentümlichen Faszinationseffekt abhängen. Ein thesenartiges Resümee versucht schließlich, die weiteren Konsequenzen der Beobachtungen im Rahmen der jüngeren Forschungstendenzen zur historischen Ästhetik der Vormoderne anzudeuten.
Change is a constant element of online games, and Overwatch as well as its playable characters have been through multiple changes since the launch of the game in 2016. In this chapter, we examine the relationships players have with the playable characters of Overwatch and specifically the role that character mechanics have in these relationships. Changes to game characters are a topic of avid discussion in Overwatch communities and evoke articulations of the meaning of game characters for the players.
Narrative is increasingly promoted for improving science communication and thus combatting misinformation and facilitating fact-based education and policy (Dahlstrom 2014; ElShafie 2018). This instrumental use of narrative is laudable, but current approaches tend to be reductive and therefore potentially counterproductive. Most proponents of narrative science view narrative as a mere formula, often derived from entertainment (Luna 2013; Olson 2015; Loverd et al. 2018). Sceptics rightly worry that using narrative formats in this way oversimplifies and distorts scientific information. Given the social, medical, and environmental urgency of effective and accurate scientific communication, the shortcomings and promise of narrativizing science represent a limit-case for the applicability and scope of narrative theory and practice.
In the context of narrative science, this essay begins by examining two valences of the term “limits of narrative.” First, it criticizes the current project of narrativizing science for failing to recognize narrative’s limited capacity to handle complex scientific models and phenomena, which H. Porter Abbott has upheld as exemplary cases of the “unnarratable” (2008: 227). The second valence of “limits” emerges as a response to the first. Although scientific information often eludes narrativity, what is unnarratable now may become narratable tomorrow. As Robyn Warhol suggests, attempts to render the unnarratable can create newly narratable ground, which she calls “neonarrative” (2005: 221). That is, new narrative forms arise at the limits of the narratable. This is a territory where scientists, like experimental novelists, struggle to express new, counterintuitive models, theories or results. What biologist Lewis Wolpert calls “the unnatural nature of science” (1998)—its resistance to commonsense notions of causality and ontology—could just as well be called the unnarratable nature of science.
The essay argues that an effective use of narrative in science would need to accept the limits of narrative, probing for neonarrative footholds at those limits; those neonarrative forms would likely be challenge or violate the narrative templates audiences bring to texts of various kinds. By way of illustration, the article analyzes willfully artificial elements in diagrams depicting coevolution between pollinators and plants (Nilsson 1988; Pauw et al. 2009), a narrative whose agents and events are relative statistical values rather than discrete entities. By foregrounding the “synthetic aspect” of their characters (Phelan 1989), these diagrams showcase how scientific texts use the communicative efficacy of narrative without sacrificing accuracy or complexity.
This article verifies how Bryan Bertino’s 2008 film The Strangers articulates
the slasher formula (CLOVER, 2015; DIKA, 1985) in order to tell a horror story that is in
tune with the cultural context from the first decade of the 2000s in the United States.
Drawing from analyses of the cultural impact of the terrorist attacks on September 11th,
2001, we point out evolutions in the slasher convention, including the dissidence from
slasher films made to be deeply self-referential and campy. We also demonstrate how
the recognizable structure is subverted to play with viewer expectations, potentializing
its bleak and nihilistic ending, a narrative feature described by Pinedo (1996) as a
postmodernist trend that breaks away from the classical horror structure.
Reflecting on Paul Ricoeur's discussion of historical configuration and fictional emplotment, this article proposes to actualize his model to oppose two prototypes of narrativity, which form two poles between which narrative representations extend. Instead of basing these prototypes on narrative genres such as historiography and fiction, it compares the configuration of narratives designed to inform readers about the signification of a past event with the emplotment of narratives aiming to immerse readers in a simulated past or a fictive storyworld. While contemporary narratology has been mostly concerned with the latter case, we will see that a comparison between narratives belonging to these two poles can help us better understand the functioning of narrative texts, most of them situated between these two extremes. Drawing on stories of a plane crash found in daily newspapers and magazines, the article shows that news stories usually favor the informative function, but when an event cannot be fully told, information enters a process of serialization, leading to the emergence of a “natural” plot. This leads to the conclusion that artificial emplotment is an imitation of prefiguration rather than the triumph of concordance.
This essay analyzes Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel The Nickel Boys through the prism of the tension between concealment and unveiling, and its impact on the text’s rhetorical, narrative and ideological structure. The novel focuses on its main character’s experience of confinement at Nickel School, a juvenile correction institution. Like most prison narratives, it conceptualizes such experience in terms of an opposition between outside and inside, sliding over the legal and ethical dialectics between freedom and confinement. Thus, a rhetorical structure is articulated in the text around these and other parallel binaries: visible-concealed, public-secret/private. My interpretation of the novel relates these dichotomies to the pattern of confinement and redemption which is typical of the African American prison narrative. Furthermore, in terms of narrative progression, the text is organized as a structure of unveiling, in which the delayed disclosure of key information regarding the main characters forces a reconsideration of the entire sequence of events organized through causal relations. The novel relies on the mechanism of the “surprise ending” in order to solve its structural tensions, provoking not only the reconstruction of its lineal sequence, but a readjustment in the readers’ ethical judgment of what has been previously read.
From Henry Jenkins onwards, fan fiction study has walked pass almost 30 years and has covered a relatively large field including feminism, queer theory and mass culture, but many scholars still seem to miss the point that fan fiction is firstly a literary text and thus leave its literariness unexamined. In fact, with a high intertextuality and a “poacher” nature, fan fiction can serve as an ideal text to narratology study. This paper, through conducting a case study of The Lord of the Rings’ alternative universe fan fiction For Every Evil, is attempting to unfold fan authors’ literary talent in constructing functional character in the text and use it as a way to deliver personal interpretation to the canon. By applying characters’ known behavior as a method to resolve instability in fan fiction narrative and complete its narrative progress, authors who write alternative universe fan fiction show that this kind of “amateur” writing is worth a closer literary review. It is hoped that through the analysis, the literary merit of fan community can be better recognized, and fan fiction can be treated more as a genre rather than a cultural phenomenon in the future.
While there are interesting connections between literature and evil, there is as of yet no systematic collection of models of evil to study literature. This is problematic, since literature is among other things an evaluative discourse and the most basic evaluative category is the polarity good-evil. In addition, evil shows important affinities with basic narratological principles. To initiate a discussion of models of evil for the analysis of literature, this article organizes a dozen models of evil into four groups. The first consists of a core model which coincides with basic narratological elements in character analysis and narrative tension. The second group contains two pre-modern models of evil, defilement and moral-natural evil. The third group takes its cue from personality theory and proposes five-factor theory and an enriched ‘dark triad’, and, to balance description against narration, a model which categorizes kinds of murder. The last group organizes six models around the thematic opposition between nature and society, an opposition which forms the backbone of Western philosophy and narrative. To test their validity, the models are applied to a series of literary examples / characters, above all Grendel (Beowulf), Browning’s “My Last Duchess” and Carol Oates’ short story “Heat”.
This is a translation of the introduction and conclusion of an in Dutch published book.
Autism in Plural focuses on the contemporary proliferation and popularity of published self-narratives by people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. These self-narratives, also called “autie-biographies” or “autie-narratives”, are all concerned with the question: “what does autism mean for me as a subject?” This book therefore focuses on the way in which people deal with the label of autism spectrum disorders, rather than on the discussion of the nature or reality of the condition. In other words, the emphasis lies on what, following Alison Kafer (2013), can be called “autism as a set of practices”. This leads us to the question whether practice – the way of dealing with a label – can influence or have effects on the diagnostic category.
Of course, there are many different ways in which people can deal with a diagnosis, but the sheer number and the popularity of autism self-narratives indicates that writing about one’s own experience is one way or strategy. The question that arises is where this urge to express the self comes from. Who or what triggers us to talk/write/draw/dance about our experience and ourselves? Writing and self-expression can be private matters, a therapeutic activity, but the act of writing (and self-expression in general) is not self-evident. The relation with language, communication and narrativity is for many reasons highly complex for people with autism.
Apart from the practice of writing, this book also pays attention to the product that results from this practice of self-expression. When someone publishes a self-narrative, both off and online, she enters into the public sphere and the self-narrative becomes part of broader cultural phenomena, such as the memoir boom and the therapeutic self-help ethos. This entails that it must regarded in relation to existing narrative patterns, genres, a creative industry and an audience. This complex relation between writing practice and writing product is extremely interesting and leads to the following key question: How do autie-narratives function as cultural products and as subject-constituting practices that generate categories of identity, make them recognizable and reproducible on the one hand, and question, problematize and undermine them on the other hand.
Role-play as a Heritage Practice is the first book to examine physically performed role-enactments, such as live-action role-play (LARP), tabletop role-playing games (TRPG), and hobbyist historical reenactment (RH), from a combined game studies and heritage studies perspective.
Demonstrating that non-digital role-plays, such as TRPG and LARP, share many features with RH, the book contends that all three may be considered as heritage practices. Studying these role-plays as three distinct genres of playful, participatory and performative forms of engagement with cultural heritage, Mochocki demonstrates how an exploration of the affordances of each genre can be valuable. Showing that a player’s engagement with history or heritage material is always multi-layered, the book clarifies that the layers may be conceptualised simultaneously as types of heritage authenticity and as types of in-game immersion. It is also made clear that RH, TRPG and LARP share commonalities with a multitude of other media, including video games, historical fiction and film. Existing within, and contributing to, the fiction and non-fiction mediasphere, these role-enactments are shaped by the same large-scale narratives and discourses that persons, families, communities, and nations use to build memory and identity.
Role-play as a Heritage Practice will be of great interest to academics and students engaged in the study of heritage, memory, nostalgia, role-playing, historical games, performance, fans and transmedia narratology.
https://www.routledge.com/Role-play-as-a-Heritage-Practice-Historical-Larp-Tabletop-RPG-and-Reenactment/Mochocki/p/book/9780367673062
Psychonarratology is an approach to the empirical study of literary response and the processing of narrative. It draws on the empirical methodology of cognitive psychology and discourse processing as well as the theoretical insights and conceptual analysis of literary studies, particularly narratology. The present work provides a conceptual and empirical basis for this interdisciplinary approach that is accessible to researchers from either disciplinary background. An integrative review is presented of the classic problems in narratology: the status of the narrator, events and plot, characters and characterization, speech and thought, and focalization. For each area, Bortolussi and Dixon critique the state of the art in narratology and literary studies, discuss relevant work in cognitive psychology, and provide a new analytical framework based on the insight that readers treat the narrator as a conversational participant. Empirical evidence is presented on each problem, much of it previously unpublished.
Neste texto pondera-se, entre outras questões, a que trata de saber o que nos fica das personagens quando encerramos a leitura da narrativa. Relaciona-se esta questão com o conceito de figuração, síntese possível de quase tudo que determina o fazer personagem que, expressa ou discretamente, as ficções exibem. O aprofundamento da análise exige a sua contextualização no âmbito dos estudos narrativos, que reincorporaram no seu âmbito uma categoria narrativa (a personagem) que durante algumas décadas foi subalternizada. Da figuração passa-se à noção de sobrevida, considerada deriva ontológica da personagem. Migrando dos mundos possíveis ficcionais para o mundo real, ela ganha, em relação à figuração original, uma existência própria, que a fenomenologia da leitura contempla, no quadro da vida da obra literária.
Esports phenomena have grown rapidly in recent years, and so has research on the topic. Some of the research has also addressed esports fandom (see e.g. Taylor 2012). Nevertheless, studies comparing and contrasting how players and fans engage with the game and the esports based on that game are scarce. This study compares and contrasts how players and fans engage with playable game characters and esports players. The paper draws on previous research in fan studies, sports fandom and esports to examine the relationships of players and fans of the videogame Overwatch (Blizzard Entertainment 2016) with the fictional heroes of the game as well as with their favorite professional players in the newly started Overwatch League. We analyse how these relationships are articulated by fans and players, and pay attention to emerging similarities and differences.
The findings show that personality is deemed important for engagement with both, game characters and esports players. In addition, gender and sexual orientation emerged as important factors. By contrast, nationality was deemed important for engagement with esports players, but not with player characters. Further research should concentrate on the connections between esports and identity politics, as well as player characters and identity construction.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.