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.

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.

This book stages a dialogue between international researchers from the broad fields of complexity science and narrative studies. It presents an edited collection of chapters on aspects of how narrative theory from the humanities may be exploited to understand, explain, describe, and communicate aspects of complex systems, such as their emergent properties, feedbacks, and downwards causation; and how ideas from complexity science can inform narrative theory, and help explain, understand, and construct new, more complex models of narrative as a cognitive faculty and as a pervasive cultural form in new and old media. The book is suitable for academics, practitioners, and professionals, and postgraduates in complex systems, narrative theory, literary and film studies, new media and game studies, and science communication.

William L. Randall shows how narrative psychology is integral to how we navigate everyday life. He makes the case that all people function as narrative psychologists by continually storying their lives - as well as those of others - in memory and imagination. The book weaves anecdotes of encounters its author experiences with speculations on his own life story, probing the narrative complexity of our memories, emotions, and identities, and our experience of everything from romance to rumour and history to religion.

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject Film Science, grade: 1,3, University of Münster, language: English, abstract: In my term paper, I will examine the narrative structure in “Memento“ which switches between chronological narration and reversed temporality. With respect to this unique narrative structure, I will take a closer look at the black-and-white and colour sequences, the opening sequence and the outstanding and resolvent scene 22/A, especially regarding the cinematography used. In the further course of my work, you will learn of the essential role of the unreliable narrator regarding my thesis and finally what impact the fabula construction in “Memento” has on his viewers. „Causes and their effects are basic to narrative, but they take place in time“. This quotation from Bordwell’s and Thompson’s work Film Art, an Introduction does not only show a fundamental principle of narration but furthermore depicts a possibility to manipulate the spectator’s understanding of a story. Christopher Nolan’s “Memento” is one example of what a complex narration can be. The film shows two separate stories of Leonard, an ex-insurance investigator who suffers anterograde amnesia and attempts to find the murderer of his wife, which is the last thing he can remember. On the one hand there is a forward moving storyline, the black-and-white scenes while the other one, the colour sequences, tells the story backwards. Although the story behind the film is rather simple, the narrative structure is extremely complex and clever, which demands constant attention from its spectators. This term paper will deal with the methods used in “Memento” which mislead the audience’s understanding of the story. My thesis is therefore: Narrative complexity in Christopher Nolan’s “Memento” – Narrative structure, Narrator’s unreliability, fabula construction and cinematography as key elements for the spectator’s manipulation. Apart from the film “Memento”, the central literature I will work with is the essay by Stefano Ghislotti “Narrative Comprehension Made Difficult: Film, Form and Mnemonic Devices in ‘Memento’”, the documentary “Anatomy of a Scene” about the making of “Memento”, a text by Andy Klein named "Everything You Wanted to Know about ‘Memento’” and different filmic narrativity by Jakob Lothe, David Herman and Edward Branigan. In addition to that, there is a self-generated sequence analysis attached to the term paper in order to have an overall view of the scenes I take a closer look at.

A comprehensive and sustained analysis of the development of storytelling for television Over the past two decades, new technologies, changing viewer practices, and the proliferation of genres and channels has transformed American television. One of the most notable impacts of these shifts is the emergence of highly complex and elaborate forms of serial narrative, resulting in a robust period of formal experimentation and risky programming rarely seen in a medium that is typically viewed as formulaic and convention bound. Complex TV offers a sustained analysis of the poetics of television narrative, focusing on how storytelling has changed in recent years and how viewers make sense of these innovations. Through close analyses of key programs, including The Wire, Lost, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Veronica Mars, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Mad Men the book traces the emergence of this narrative mode, focusing on issues such as viewer comprehension, transmedia storytelling, serial authorship, character change, and cultural evaluation. Developing a television-specific set of narrative theories, Complex TV argues that television is the most vital and important storytelling medium of our time.

A new edition that brings the ways we watch and think about television up to the present We all have opinions about the television shows we watch, but television criticism is about much more than simply evaluating the merits of a particular show and deeming it “good” or “bad.” Rather, criticism uses the close examination of a television program to explore that program’s cultural significance, creative strategies, and its place in a broader social context. How to Watch Television, Second Edition brings together forty original essays—more than half of which are new to this edition—from today’s leading scholars on television culture, who write about the programs they care (and think) the most about. Each essay focuses on a single television show, demonstrating one way to read the program and, through it, our media culture. From fashioning blackness in Empire to representation in Orange is the New Black and from the role of the reboot in Gilmore Girls to the function of changing political atmospheres in Roseanne, these essays model how to practice media criticism in accessible language, providing critical insights through analysis—suggesting a way of looking at TV that students and interested viewers might emulate. The contributors discuss a wide range of television programs past and present, covering many formats and genres, spanning fiction and non-fiction, broadcast, streaming, and cable. Addressing shows from TV’s earliest days to contemporary online transformations of the medium, How to Watch Television, Second Edition is designed to engender classroom discussion among television critics of all backgrounds. To access additional essays from the first edition, visit the "links" tab at nyupress.org/9781479898817/how-to-watch-television-second-edition/.