I will now identify five narrative attributes that exist in the
digital works for the purposes of my close reading. The first is the event, or
more specifically, following the work of Hühn, a type II narrative event,
which,
Acquires the relevance and
additional features that constitute it only with reference to intradiegetic
expectations, to a literary or cultural context. It must, that is to say, be
brought into being and related to its surroundings by an entity (character,
narrator, or reader) that comprehends and interprets the change of state
involved (Hühn 2011 np).
Type II events in narrative rely on “terms of structural
switches or contrasts” (Hühn 2011 np). Hühn goes on to cite genre recognition
and tropes as examples of how structural switches can elicit narrative
progression in reading (Hühn 2011 np). In my analysis, the attention to context and genre are further
examples of how structural switches or contasts function to represent narrative
events. By making meaningful connections to signifying elements, such as a
speech accent or the wealth of a neighbourhood, a narrative event is provided
with context. Of course it is necessary for the reader to be aware of these
contexts, and it is this assumed awareness that creates the restrictions and
stipulations for reading in the following analysis.
The
second attribute is material instantiation. The material instantiation of narrative
operates as a pivot in reading the digital works. The material instantiation of
the digital works should be understood in terms of “the semantic system that
underlies narrative texts cannot be distinguished from the system of the
supporting medium” (Ryan 2007 24). The materials of a text thus determine how
the digital works function in reading. Marie-Laure Ryan proposes a “toolkit”
for the conceptual definition of narrative as narrativity, which explains the
material instantiation of the works examined in this study:
The proposal below organizes the
conditions of narrativity into three semantic and one formal and pragmatic
dimension.
Spatial
dimension
(1) Narrative must be about a world
populated by individuated existents.
Temporal
dimension
(2) This world must be situated in
time and undergo significant transformations.
(3) The transformations must be caused
by non-habitual physical events.
Mental
dimension
(4) Some of the participants in the
events must be intelligent agents who have a mental life and react emotionally
to the states of the world.
(5) Some of the events must be
purposeful actions by these agents.
Formal
and pragmatic dimension
(6) The sequence of events must form a
unified causal chain and lead to closure.
(7) The occurrence of at least some of
the events must be asserted as fact for the storyworld.
(8) The story must communicate
something meaningful to the audience.
Each of these conditions prevents a
certain type of representation from forming the focus of interest, or
macro-structure, of a story. This does not mean that these representations
cannot appear in a narrative text, but rather, that they cannot, all by
themselves, support its narrativity (Ryan 2007 29).[1]
The basic requirement
of a “world” or space “populated by individuated existents” emphasizes the
importance of spatial relations the works. The question that is relevant to
this dissertation is how are these spaces are understood as meaningful in digital
narrative? In this sense the formal and pragmatic dimensions of narrative provoke
my analysis. Narrative always relies on a materially grounded signifying system
(i.e. speech, images, writing, spaces, sounds), which I contend is spatial on
the level of design, and addressive in what I explain are the deeper narrative
levels in the digital works. The spaces of the digital works are therefore organized
in reading according to the representation of place and perspective. Places can
be given meaning within the frame of space in such contexts as gender and
class, as they are in the examples I discuss in the following chapters.
Perspective places the reader in a spatial and temportal relation to the
representation of gender and class in the narrative of the texts.
The
third attribute in digital narrative is the role of representation. Representation
and temporal change are central to any definition of narrative. These attributes
are what form the basis for what Ryan terms the “unified causal chain” (Ryan
2007 29), which can, but does not necessarily, lead to narrative closure. However,
in the above definition of narrativity Ryan does not qualify how the “story
must communicate something meaningful to the audience” (Ryan 2007 29). In relation
to communication, Ryan proposes a set of binary distinctions elsewhere between
representation and temporal change in “digital narratives, which are simulative
rather than representational, emergent rather than scripted, participatory
rather than receptive, and simultaneous rather than retrospective” (Ryan 2006
xxi). Strict binary distinctions are not reflected in the works of this present
study, which manifest a spectrum consistent with the type II narrative event,
“with reference to intradiegetic expectations, to a literary or cultural
context” (Hühn 2011 np). A spectrum is composed in the works of representation
in narrative, from the intradeigetic expectations such as technical skill and
an awareness of how perspective functions in three-dimensional space, to
literary and cultural contexts (e.g. genres represented in the works). The
following analysis takes up key elements in this representation, which I argue
is essential for the experience of narrative.
The
fourth attribute in defining digital narrative is temporality. Traditionally
associated in narrative with the recounting of pastness, temporality is challenged
in the digital works by how interactivity makes narrative a present-time
experience. The present time of narrative experience, whereby the reader
participates in the development of a story in navigating a space, by communicating
with programmed characters or by making strategic decisions from the choices offered,
is an example of narrative in real time. In digital mediated narrative, the
audience can be involved in the production of narrative in their own performance
of the text. Any associated notions of representation occur in what Ryan
describes as a narrative “present with a full temporal meaning, expressing
simultaneity between the time of narration and the time of experience” (Ryan 2006
78). Such a temporality, if not simultaneous with the represented time of the
story, can only be coordinated at the time of the experience in reading. In this sense the indicators of narrative
effect are built into the material structures of the works. As a result the aesthetics of
effect are at the center of my analysis, grounded in close readings for gender,
place, class and space, and the resulting progression of narrative according to
the possibilities for responding to the texts according to the conditions imposed
on reading by a type II narrative event.
The
fifth attribute of digital narrative is levels, which are “the relations among
the plurality of narrating instances within a narrative, and more specifically
the vertical relations between narrating instances” (Pier and Coste np). Pier
and Coste build upon the work of Genette who first conceived of the concept of
narrative levels. Peir and Coste quote from Genette in explaining
Any event a narrative recounts is at a diegetic
level immediately higher than the level at which the narrating act producing
this narrative is placed […]. The narrating instance of a first narrative [récit
premier] is therefore extradiegetic by definition, as the narrating
instance of a second (metadiegetic) narrative [récit second] is diegetic
by definition, etc. (Genette ([1972] 1980: 228–29) (Pier and Coste np).
In Genette’s definintion there
is a sense of ‘liveness’ or uniqueness that results from the extradiegetic
narrative instance. Ryan goes on to introduce a stronger sense of the
interactive as an experience by introducing an ontological level of narrative,
which creates “not only a change of narrative voice but a change of world. In
this case the reader must recenter herself into a new fictional world and start
building its mental image from scratch” (Ryan 2006 205). However, I argue the
ontological level of narrative destabilizes representation in the works, while
attempting to account for the interactive and particpatory levels of
storytelling using digital media. Instead, the effect of levels in narrative is
better explained by the concept of metalepsis as it applies to the digital
works.
From
narrative levels emerges metalepsis, or “a paradoxical contamination between
the world of the telling and the world of the told” (Pier 2011 np). This
contamination is accomplished by transitions between narrative levels.
According to traditional narrative theory, metalepsis is transgressive in how
it ‘crosses over’ the boundaries between what is told and the telling of it, as
in when a character speaks to an audience member directly or the frame of the
story ruptures with a narrative reference to the medium of delivery. Genette
explains this shift in how
The transition from one
narrative level to another can in principle be achieved only by the narrating,
the act that consists precisely of introducing into one situation, by means of
a discourse, the knowledge of another situation. Any other form of transit is,
if not always impossible, at any rate always transgressive (Genette 1996 181).
The resulting transgressive
status assigned to narrative metalepsis is further reflected in a more recent
definition, whereby metalepsis opperates,
Across media, metalepsis can be
ascending across narrative levels, when a character moves out of a fictional
world and enters the real world, potentially encountering its authors or
readers; or it can be descending across narrative levels, when authors or
narrators enter the fictional world (See Pier 2005, see also McHale 1987 who
speaks of entanglements for the heirarchy of narrative levels) (Kukkonen 2011
3).
The digital works of this study
exhibit these transitions in the changes offered by navigation, and according
to address and spatial representation (including perspective and the
representation of place).
The
transitions between narrative levels in the digital works are very much akin to
what Astrid Ensslin terms “interactional metalepsis” (Ensslin 2011
11). Interactional metalepsis is produced by
Digital and
interactive media that require the user‘s physical interaction with its
hardware and software: computer games, of course, the metaleptic medium par
excellence, digital fiction and poetry, and of course non-ludic virtual worlds
like Second Life, as well as the
creative and participatory uses they are put to by contemporary artists and
media audiences (Ensslin 2011 11).
Interactional metalepsis is an
extradiegetic level in relation to the previous (diegetic) narrating level in
the digital works. The transition between these levels contributes to how interactive
digital texts function as narratives. Transitons in space, narrative events,
and temporality occur within the frame of interactional metalepsis. These forms
of transition embrace shifting addressive modes and audio-visual perspectives,
links and other techniques for navigation, focalization and the combinatory
possibilities that are coded into the texts within representation. I go on to analyze
these transitions in close readings, according to how they restrict the choices
and references available to the reader as part of narrative.
[1] The first
three of these qualities of narrative were first published in “Introduction to
Narrative Across Media” (Ryan 2004 8-9) as “an informal characterization of the
representation that a text must bring to mind to qualify as narrative” (Ryan
2004 8).
Sources Cited
Ennslin, Astrid. Diegetic Exposure and Cybernetic Performance: Towards Interactional Metalepsis. Plenary paper presented at 'Staging Illusion: Digital and Cultural Fantasy', Sussex, 8-9 December 2011 http://bangor.academia.edu/AstridEnsslin/Papers/1220348/Diegetic_Exposure_and_Cybernetic_Performance_Towards_Interactional_Metalepsis Accessed 21 August 2012.
Genette, Gérard. “Voice”. 172-190, Narratology: An Introduction. Onega, Susana. José Angel Garcia Landa (Eds.) London: Longman, 1996.
Hühn, Peter: "Event and Eventfulness". The Living Handbook of Narratology. Hühn, Peter et al. (eds.). Hamburg: Hamburg University Press. Last modified: 7 June 2011. hup.sub.uni-hamburg.de/lhn/index.php?title=Eventand Eventfulness&oldid=1446 Accessed 18 Aug 2012
Kukkonen, Karin. "Metalepsis in Popular Culture: An Introduction". 1-21. Metalepsis in Popular Culture. K. Kukkonenand S. Klimek (Ed.) Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2011.
Pier, John. “Metalepsis”. The Living Handbook of Narratology. 11 June 2011. http://hup.sub.uni-hamburg.de/lhn/index.php/Metalepsis Accessed 30 June 2012.
Pier, John. Didier Coste "Narrative Levels". The Living Handbook of Narratology. Hühn, Peter et al. (Eds.). Hamburg: Hamburg University Press, 2012. http://hup.sub.uni-hamburg.de/lhn/index.php/Narrative_Levels Accessed 18 June 2012.
Ryan, Marie-Laure. Avatars of Story. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
Ryan, Marie-Laure. “Toward a Definition of Narrative”. The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. David Herman (Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge Univerity Press, 2007. 21-35.
