Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling

Frontiers of Narrative

by Marie-Laure Ryan (Editor)

Narratology has been conceived from its earliest days as a project that transcends disciplines and media. The essays gathered here address the question of how narrative migrates, mutates, and creates meaning as it is expressed across various media.  Dividing the inquiry into five face-to-face narrative, still pictures, moving pictures, music, and digital media, Narrative across Media investigates how the intrinsic properties of the supporting medium shape the form of narrative and affect the narrative experience. Unlike other interdisciplinary approaches to narrative studies, all of which have tended to concentrate on narrative across language-supported fields, this unique collection provides a much-needed analysis of how narrative operates when expressed through visual, gestural, electronic, and musical means. In doing so, the collection redefines the act of storytelling. Although the fields of media and narrative studies have been invigorated by a variety of theoretical approaches, this volume seeks to avoid a dominant theoretical bias by providing instead a collection of concrete studies that inspire a direct look at texts rather than relying on a particular theory of interpretation. A contribution to both narrative and media studies, Narrative across Media is the first attempt to bridge the two disciplines.

Genres: Nonfiction, Language, Academic

422 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2004

Reviews

[Sally Sugarman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a challenging and stimulating book. Much of it is theoretical, but it raises an awareness of how much the nature of the media in which stories are told affect them. The media covered include oral, pictorial, cinematic, musical and digital storytelling. The editor writes an introduction to each section as well as a few articles of her own. There is a great deal to absorb as the work of various theorists are explored. When the ideas are demonstrated through the analysis of specific works, one can truly appreciate them. There are brilliant chapters on MAUS as a graphic narrative, the discussion of the musical narrative of Show Boat and another on early reality television programs that show everyday horror and violence. Although these are particularly vivid, all of the articles provide new insight as to how the medium affects the message to quote McLuhan once again. The chapter on how film adaptations of classic literary texts change them is enlightening. One thinks of more chapters one would like to add such as the difference between cinema and television. This is not a book for the casual reader, but for anyone involved in media studies, it would seem essential.

[John Fitzgerald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, this was dense and challenging. It was thought provoking, but I think it was really only on the mark in it’s discussion of Maus (and graphic novels in general) and in the coda when it talked about the trouble of being medium and / or text blind. Meh.

[Renata · Rating 3 out of 5]

Com artigos de vários pesquisadores, este livro é um marco para os estudos da narrativa transmídia, com rigor em cada uma de suas abordagens. A intro da autora, assim como seu capítulo "Will new media produce new narratives" são bastante elucidativos acerca da possibilidade de a narrativa adotar características diferentes sob diferentes mídias. O capítulo de Aarseth questionando a possibilidade de se falar tão 'facilmente' de narrativas nos games só demonstra o quanto a investigação não é mera reiteração de certezas.

[Nelson Zagalo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good edited book, with some very good chapters.

[Iris Windmeijer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting collection of articles on narrative. The media forms are all ordened and the articles appealed to me, much more than I expected. A very interesting read!