Marina Grishakova

Marie-Laure Ryan

Extending narratological analysis to media as varied as graphic novels, photography, television, musicals, computer games and advertising, the essays gathered in this volume address some of the most fundamental questions raised by the medial turn in narratology: how can narrative meaning be created in media other than language; how do different types of signs collaborate with each other in so-called multimodal works; and what new forms of narrativity are made possible by the emergence of digital media."

Intermediality and Storytelling

Silvi Salupere

This volume provides a new outlook on twentieth-century theoretical schools and movements in the humanities, both as generators of conceptual knowledge and as cultural phenomena. Offering a new perspective on unstudied or less studied groups, such as Tel Aviv School of poetics and semiotics or the research group Poetics and Hermeneutics, this book looks at what defined these schools and circles in their respective historical and institutional contexts, and traces how their dialogues and controversies resonate in the scholarly discourse in the 21st century.

Literary Theory, History, Philosophy

Theoretical Schools and Circles in the Twentieth-century Humanities

The ‘narrative turn’ in the humanities, which expanded the study of narrative to various disciplines, has found a correlate in the ‘medial turn’ in narratology. Long restricted to language-based literary fiction, narratology has found new life in the recognition that storytelling can take place in a variety of media, and often combines signs belonging to different semiotic categories: visual, auditory, linguistic and perhaps even tactile. The essays gathered in this volume apply the newly gained awareness of the expressive power of media to particular texts, demonstrating the productivity of a medium-aware analysis. Through the examination of a wide variety of different media, ranging from widely studied, such as literature and film, to new, neglected, or non-standard ones, such as graphic novels, photography, television, musicals, computer games and advertising, they address some of the most fundamental questions raised by the medial turn in narratology: how can narrative meaning be created in media other than language; how do different types of signs collaborate with each other in so-called ‘multi-modal works’, and what new forms of narrativity are made possible by the emergence of digital media.

Maria Poulaki

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.

Cognition, Embodiment, Evolution

Narrative Complexity

Because of his rejection of socio-political engagement, Vladimir Nabokov is often regarded as a virtuouso artist of the ivory-tower variety, aloof from the contemporary march of the minds. Marina Grishakova's book, however, points to the relationship between his narrative techniques and some of the scientific, metaphysical, and ethical ideas on the inner agenda of the twentieth century. It connects Nabokov's handling of time, space, and perspective in his fiction with the philosophical models constructed by his contemporaries, also showing in what ways he may have been ahead of his time.

Narrative Strategies and Cultural Frames

The Models of Space, Time and Vision in V. Nabokovs Fiction

Jurij M. Lotman

I︠U︡riĭ Mikhaĭlovich Lotman

Wilma Clark

Demonstrates, with copious examples, how culture influences the way that humans experience 'reality'. This work is suitable for students and researchers in semiotics, cultural/literary studies and Russian studies worldwide, as well as anyone with an interest in understanding contemporary intellectual life.

Marina Grishakova

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