Browsing by Subject "Narratology"
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Item Crime and narrative : violence as a master narrative in contemporary crime novels(2012-08) Sessolo, Simone; Arens, Katherine, 1953-; Hoad, Neville; Johnson, Michael; Nehring, Neil; Raffa, Guy; Hardt, MichaelThis study analyzes crime novels written around the turn of the twenty-first century that blur the boundaries between “serious” fiction and genre fiction. I argue that these novels represent violence, not as an isolated event or action, but as a pervasive cultural logic. In other words, they frame violence as a cultural and institutional problem, instead of as a disruptive social anomaly, and they thereby expose violence as a constitutive force in a world and era in which social relations are always already mediated by the disciplinary apparatus of institutions. Novels like Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, Nuruddin Farah’s Secrets, and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, draw attention to the cultural logic of violence by reproducing conventions associated with more traditional crime fiction—a crime to be solved, a “detective” figure, and the gradual revelation of clues—but these novels break with traditional crime fiction in one important way: they do not follow a trajectory of crime and punishment. Such a trajectory necessarily limits our understanding of violence to isolated actions that can be punished and to individuals who can be reformed. By breaking with the logic of crime and punishment, these novels position violence as a master narrative or as an interpretive lens that invites readers to engage in a critique of institutionalized and systemic violence. This investigation traces how this new practice of crime narrative seeks to exile readers from horizons of expectations that would ordinarily be associated with crime fiction. These contemporary novels constitute a new crime fiction subgenre: a narrative that, through the use of new conventions, forces its readers to confront the limits of canonical forms and to consider violence as a contemporary master narrative.Item Finding Lollius : empathy, textual knowledge, and the ending of Troilus and Criseyde(2014-05) Escandell, Jason Paul; Scala, Elizabeth, 1966-; Wojciehowski, HannahThe ending of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde has been a frequent source of dissatisfaction and confusion. After five full books centered on a doomed love between pagans, the final stanzas suddenly shift to an orthodox Christian rejection of worldly desire. Whether damning or praising the ending, critics generally recognize it as radically different from the lines preceding it. This report seeks to identify the root of that difference, and to explain its effect on the reading experience. The narrator of Troilus and Criseyde, a character in his own right, manipulates his putative source text--Lollius--to highlight the gaps left in his narrative. These gaps, in turn, constrict our perspective on the poem, preventing us from adopting either the Godlike Boethian viewpoint the Troilus appears to recommend or the melancholic attitude of the titular lovers. Instead, our point of identification is the narrator, who has read, as he persistently reminds us, a book that we cannot. Thus, even when the Troilus is read to the end, it feels incomplete. I ground this reading in both narratology and cognitive science, and illustrate it by examining two early printed "completions" of Chaucer's text: Wynkyn de Worde's colophon and Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid.Item The language of uncertainty in W.G. Sebald's novels(2012-05) Kohn, Robert George; Bos, Pascale R.; Hake, Sabine; Hoberman, John; Broadbent, Philip; Crew, DavidThis dissertation investigates two of W.G. Sebald’s novels, "Die Ausgewanderten" and "Austerlitz" as examples of a unique kind of Holocaust fiction by a non-Jewish German author. Sebald’s fiction represents a radically different German depiction of the Holocaust and its effects on Jewish victims, as it deconstructs critical discourse and debates about the Holocaust in Germany, establishing an ethical approach to Jewish suffering and the idea of coming to terms with the Nazi past in the German context. Through the narrative structure, ambiguity and the language of the German narrators, what I term its language of uncertainty, Sebald’s fiction avoids appropriating the Jewish voice as well as identifying with Jewish Holocaust victims and survivors, while giving voice to the underrepresented Jewish perspective in contemporary German literature. In addition, this dissertation examines competing discourses on representation, victimization and memory in regard to the Nazi past and views Sebald’s work as a critical response to these discussions. Indeed, Sebald’s fiction moves the discussion beyond the trope of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (“mastery of the past”), which has for so long dominated discussion of the Holocaust in Germany, towards a reconsideration of the victims, whose voice has been marginalized in the focus on the non-Jewish German handling of the Nazi past.Item To build the impossible : narratology and ludology in the BioShock trilogy(2015-05) Reblin, Elizabeth Anne; Strover, Sharon; Blood, JohnIn 2007, Irrational Games released the steampunk first-person shooter BioShock. Months after the game's release, Clint Hocking wrote a blog post entitled "Ludonarrative Dissonance in BioShock." The essay brought the debate between narratology and ludology in game studies from the realm of academics, theorists, and developers, to the average gamer. No longer were players and critics analyzing a game based on just its gameplay and/or aesthetics. Now there was the pre-conceived notion that video games should aim to have its narratives element reflect the ludological components as well. The primary objective of this thesis is to explore the relationship between the narratological and ludological components in the BioShock trilogy that went into creating its unique experience as a player-driven narrative. I will be performing three case studies, comparing and contrasting BioShock, BioShock 2, and BioShock Infinite in regards to ludonarrative synchronicity. Rather than using Hocking's term, "ludonarrative dissonance," which is loaded with negative connotation, I will analyze the games based on their attempt to reach "ludonarrative synchronicity." This term of my own signifies moments when the narratological elements of a game converge with the ludological elements in a harmonious fashion. Unlike Hocking’s word choice, ludonarrative synchronicity does not seek to find fault in a game from the outset. The strength of analyzing the BioShock trilogy in depth, rather than focusing on a group of separate, unrelated titles, is two-fold. First, BioShock's creator Ken Levine's stated goal was to build a game in which the players were not an observer of narrative, but a participant. The other advantage of having three related games to analyze is that it allows for multiple points of comparison and correlation that appear in all three games. I will detail specific narratological and ludological aspects of each game for those who have not played them, followed by an examination of three key points of comparison between the three games where the intersection of narratology and ludology are prominent within the entire trilogy. Those three key points, not necessarily exclusive of one another, are theme, level design, and immersion.Item When fairy godmothers are men : Dickens's gendered use of fairy tales as a form of narrative control in Bleak House(2011-05) Smith, Melissa Ann, master of arts in English; MacKay, Carol Hanbery; Ferreira-Buckley, LindaThis paper explores how Charles Dickens’s use of a female narrator in Bleak House (1853) fundamentally problematizes and undermines his use of the fairy tale’s cultural cachet, motifs, and characters to prop up and project his fantasies of the feminine ideal. More specifically, it examines the effects of the thematic presence of several tale-types and stock fairy tale figures on Dickens’s ability to prescribe ideal feminine behaviors, such as incuriosity and selfless obedience, to both his characters and his female audience. Because Esther’s ability to write and her interest in either discovering or constructing her own identity establish her as competitor to the males who attempt to script her life, Dickens tries to control and circumscribe her ability to know and act through her own and other characters’ resemblance to traditional fairy tale character types, especially Bluebeard and Griselda. Esther’s narrative, however, betrays these unnatural delimitations in telltale interruptions and denials as Dickens attempts to circumvent the constraints he has placed on her voice. Esther’s narrative therefore resists but imperfectly overcomes the Victorian male author’s scripting of femininity.