Narrative Theory And The Cognitive Sciences

This volume describes the theoretical and empirical results of a seven year collaborative effort of cognitive scientists to develop a computational model for narrative understanding. Disciplines represented include artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, communicative disorders, education, English, geography, linguistics, and philosophy. The book argues for an organized representational system -- a Deictic Center (DC) -- which is constructed by readers from language in a text combined with their world knowledge. As readers approach a new text they need to gather and maintain information about who the participants are and where and when the events take place. This information plays a central role in understanding the narrative. The editors claim that readers maintain this information without explicit textual reminders by including it in their mental model of the story world. Because of the centrality of the temporal, spatial, and character information in narratives, they developed their notion of a DC as a crucial part of the reader's mental model of the narrative. The events that carry the temporal and spatial core of the narrative are linguistically and conceptually constrained according to certain principles that can be relatively well defined. A narrative obviously unfolds one word, or one sentence, at a time. This volume suggests that cognitively a narrative usually unfolds one place and time at a time. This spatio-temporal location functions as part of the DC of the narrative. It is the "here" and "now" of the reader's "mind's eye" in the world of the story. Organized into seven parts, this book describes the goal of the cognitive science project resulting in this volume, the methodological approaches taken, and the history of the collaborative effort. It provides a historical and theoretical background underlying the DC theory, including discussions of deixis in language and the nature of fiction. It goes on to outline the computational framework and how it is used to represent deixis in narrative, and details the linguistic devices implicated in the DC theory. Other subjects covered include: crosslinguistic indicators of subjectivity, psychological investigations of the use of deixis by children and adults as they process narratives, conversation, direction giving, implications for emerging literacy, and a narrator's experience in writing a short story.

We live in an age that is witnessing a growing interest in narrative studies, cognitive neuroscientific tools, mind studies and artificial intelligence hypotheses. This book therefore aims to expand the exegesis of Carroll's "Alice" books, aligning them with the current intellectual environment. The theoretical force of this volume lies in the successful encounter between a great book (and all its polysemous ramifications) and a new interpretative point of view, powerful enough to provide a new original contribution, but well grounded enough not to distort the text itself. Moreover, this book is one of the first to offer a complete, thorough analysis of one single text through the theoretical lens of cognitive narratology, and not just as a series of brief examples embedded within a more general discussion. It emphasises in a more direct, effective way the actual novelty and usefulness of the dialogue established between narrative theory and the cognitive sciences. It links specific concepts elaborated in the theory of cognitive narratology with the analysis of the "Alice" books, helping in this way to discuss, question and extend the concepts themselves, opening up new interpretations and practical methods.

The Science of Stories explores the role narrative plays in human life. Supported by in-depth research, the book demonstrates how the ways in which people tell their stories can be indicative of how they construct their worlds and their own identities. Based on linguistic analysis and computer technology, Laszlo offers an innovative methodology which aims to uncover underlying psychological processes in narrative texts. The reader is presented with a theoretical framework along with a series of studies which explore the way a systematic linguistic analysis of narrative discourse can lead to a scientific study of identity construction, both individual and group. The book gives a critical overview of earlier narrative theories and summarizes previous scientific attempts to uncover relationships between language and personality. It also deals with social memory and group identity: various narrative forms of historical representations (history books, folk narratives, historical novels) are analyzed as to how they construct the past of a nation. The Science of Stories is the first book to build a bridge between scientific and hermeneutic studies of narratives. As such, it will be of great interest to a diverse spectrum of readers in social science and the liberal arts, including those in the fields of cognitive science, social psychology, linguistics, philosophy, literary studies and history.

How do narratives draw on our memory capacity? How is our attention guided when we are reading a literary narrative? What kind of empathy is triggered by intercultural novels? A cast of international scholars explores these and other questions from an interdisciplinary perspective in Stories and Minds, a collection of essays that discusses cutting-edge research in the field of cognitive narrative studies. Recent findings in the philosophy of mind and cognitive psychology, among other disciplines, are integrated in fresh theoretical perspectives and illustrated with accompanying analyses of literary fiction. Pursuing such topics as narrative gaps, mental simulation in reading, theory of mind, and folk psychology, these essays address fundamental questions about the role of cognitive processes in literary narratives and in narrative comprehension. Stories and Minds reveals the rich possibilities for research along the nexus of narrative and mind.

Toward a Cognitive Theory of Narrative Acts brings together in one volume cutting-edge research that turns to recent findings in cognitive and neurobiological sciences, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and evolutionary biology, among other disciplines, to explore and understand more deeply various cultural phenomena, including art, music, literature, and film. The essays fulfilling this task for the general reader as well as the specialist are written by renowned authors H. Porter Abbott, Patrick Colm Hogan, Suzanne Keen, Herbert Lindenberger, Lisa Zunshine, Katja Mellman, Lalita Pandit Hogan, Klarina Priborkin, Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach, Ellen Spolsky, and Richard Walsh. Among the works analyzed are plays by Samuel Beckett, novels by Maxine Hong Kingston, music compositions by Igor Stravinsky, art by Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, and films by Michael Haneke. Each of the essays shows in a systematic, clear, and precise way how music, art, literature, and film work in and of themselves and also how they are interconnected. Finally, while each of the essays is unique in style and methodological approach, together they show the way toward a unified knowledge of artistic creativity.

Basic Elements of Narrative outlines a way of thinking about what narrative is and how to identify its basic elements across various media, introducing key concepts developed by previous theorists and contributing original ideas to the growing body of scholarship on stories. Includes an overview of recent developments in narrative scholarship Provides an accessible introduction to key concepts in the field Views narrative as a cognitive structure, type of text, and resource for interpersonal communication Uses examples from literature, face to face interaction, graphic novels, and film to explore the core features of narrative Includes a glossary of key terms, full bibliography, and comprehensive index Appropriate for multiple audiences, including students, non-specialists, and experts in the field

The theory of Blending, or Conceptual Integration, proposed by Gilles Fauconnier and Marc Turner, is one of most promising cognitive theories of meaning production. It has been successfully applied to the analysis of poetic discourse and micro-textual elements, such as metaphor. Prose narrative has so far received significantly less attention. The present volume aims to remedy this situation. Following an introductory discussion of the connections between narrative and the processes of blending, the contributions demonstrate the range of applications of the theory to the study of narrative. They cover issues such as time and space, literary character and perspective, genre, story levels, and fictional minds; some chapters show how such phenomena as metalepsis, counterfactual narration, intermediality, extended metaphors, and suspense can be fruitfully studied from the vantage point of Conceptual Integration. Working within a theoretical framework situated at the intersection of narratology and the cognitive sciences, the book provides both fresh readings for individual literary and film narratives and new impulses for post-classical narratology.

This book explains how the brain interacts with the social world—and why stories matter. How do our brains enable us to tell and follow stories? And how do stories affect our minds? In Stories and the Brain, Paul B. Armstrong analyzes the cognitive processes involved in constructing and exchanging stories, exploring their role in the neurobiology of mental functioning. Armstrong argues that the ways in which stories order events in time, imitate actions, and relate our experiences to others' lives are correlated to cortical processes of temporal binding, the circuit between action and perception, and the mirroring operations underlying embodied intersubjectivity. He reveals how recent neuroscientific findings about how the brain works—how it assembles neuronal syntheses without a central controller—illuminate cognitive processes involving time, action, and self-other relations that are central to narrative. An extension of his previous book, How Literature Plays with the Brain, this new study applies Armstrong's analysis of the cognitive value of aesthetic harmony and dissonance to narrative. Armstrong explains how narratives help the brain negotiate the neverending conflict between its need for pattern, synthesis, and constancy and its need for flexibility, adaptability, and openness to change. The neuroscience of these interactions is part of the reason stories give shape to our lives even as our lives give rise to stories. Taking up the age-old question of what our ability to tell stories reveals about language and the mind, this truly interdisciplinary project should be of interest to humanists and cognitive scientists alike.