Tag: CFP

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Narrative as Structure and Action

In order to celebrate

 

  • the 30th Anniversary of the journal Narrative Inquiry & the publication of the Special Issue

Methodology of narrative study: What the first thirty years of Narrative Inquiry have revealed

 

  • the publication of the Routledge Handbook of Counter-Narratives (ed. by Klarissa Lueg and Marianne Wolff Lundholt)

 

 

Narrare, Centre for Interdisciplinary Narrative Studies, Tampere University, will organize a zoom seminar

 

Narrative as structure and action –  rethinking master and counter-narratives

April 19 2021

14:15–16:15 UTC+3 (summer time in Tampere)

12:15–14:15 UTC+1 (summer time in London)

Online seminar, Tampere University

 

During the last twenty years, the focus of narrative studies has moved from studying the structure of separate narrative texts to examining narration as action. The study of conversational storytelling and co-construction of meanings in talk-in-interaction together with the thriving positioning analyses provide examples of this gradual change.  The study of counter- and master narratives, however, seems to offer possibilities to study both action (telling counter-narratives) and structure (the existence of master narratives and genres) within the same analytic frame. In surveying this new field, we can ask questions such as:

  • how should the existence of master narratives be documented?
  • are master narratives primarily researcher’s (etic) or language user’s (emic) resources?
  • does the existence of a counter-narrative require explicit ‘speech act of resisting’ (Bamberg & Wippf)?
  • can we understand structures (genres and master narratives) in terms of some kind of ‘structuration,’ that is, as resulting from the previous narrative and other action?
  • what is the relationship between genres and master narratives?

You are welcome to discuss these and other related issues on April 19., at 14:00 –16:00 UTC+3 (summer time in Tampere), 12:00 – 14:00 UTC+1 (summer time in London)

Programme

14.15 Mari Hatavara, Tampere University: Opening words

14.20 Kim Schoofs & Dorien Van De Mieroop, KU Leuven: The negotiation of master narratives through epistemic competitions in interviews with Jewish Holocaust survivors

14.50 Klarissa Lueg, University of Southern Denmark: Bourdieusian practice theory and narratology: conceptualizing (counter)narratives as a means of field struggles

15.20 Matti Hyvärinen, Tampere University: Forging, evoking but not telling master narratives

15.50 Joint discussion

 

 

Anna Kuutsa is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

 

Topic: Narrative as structure and action – rethinking master and counter-narratives

Time: Apr 19, 2021 02:15 PM Helsinki

 

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Fictionality in Narrative Theory

The ISSN’s  guaranteed panel at the 2018 MLA Convention in New York City will be on “Fictionality in Narrative Theory: A Re-examination of Core Concepts.”

Here’s the very short CFP posted on the MLA website: Papers addressing—or challenging—the claim that the rhetorical approach to fictionality (Nielsen, Phelan, and Walsh 2015) revises ideas about core concepts of narrative, .e.g. narrator, paratext. 250-word abstracts by 1 March 2017; James Phelan (phelan.1@osu.edu) and Henrik Skov Nielseen ( norhn@cc.au.dk).

And here’s the more expansive description of the panel, which was jointly composed by Henrik, Richard Walsh, and me.  Please let us know if you have any questions.

Fictionality in Narrative Theory: A Re-examination of Core Concepts

 

Fictionality theory has a long and varied history in literary studies, philosophy, and related fields.  A short list of highlights would include Vaihinger’s philosophical approach to “as if”; Walton’s concept of “make believe”; Dorrit Cohn’s attempts to identify the “distinction of fiction”; the possible world theories of Marie-Laure Ryan, Thomas Pavel, and Lubomir Dolezel; Daniel Punday’s investigations of fictionality and postmodernism.

 

Since the publication of Richard Walsh’s The Rhetoric of Fictionality in 2007, scholars working in the broad area of rhetorical narrative theory (see, for example, Nielsen, Phelan, and Walsh 2015) have suggested a new approach to fictionality founded on two key principles: a) a distinction between generic fictions such as the novel, short story, and fiction film, on the one hand, and the quality of fictionality, understood as a mode of discourse prevalent across genres and media on the other hand.  This distinction between fiction and fictionality makes generic fictions a subset of the large class of discourses (typically having some narrative dimension) in which fictionality is employed.  From this perspective, fictionality is a rhetoric not contingent upon the assumption that the discourse offers factual information.

 

The proposed panel seeks to explore the narrative theoretical consequences of this approach to fictionality by using it to re-examine core concepts of narrative.  Most of the concepts narrative theorists employ to analyze narrative were developed under the theoretical paradigm of structuralist narratology and its largely unexamined assumptions about the nature of fiction.  The panel asks how conceiving of fictionality as rhetoric can alter received ideas about everything from generic concepts such as metafiction and narrative poetry to intratextual concepts such as the narrator and the narratee and on to other concepts such as paratexts and intertextuality.  We welcome proposals that are focused on theoretical and case-based approaches to this central question.  We also welcome proposals that focus on one or more core concepts in order to challenge the claims of the rhetorical approach to fictionality.

Jim

—

Jim Phelan, Distinguished University Professor and Editor, Narrative

Director, Project Narrative
Department of English
Ohio State University
Columbus, OH 43210-1370
FAX 614-292-7816
phelan.1@osu.edu