Narratology and Interactive Fiction

Welcome to Week 2!

Welcome to the second week of Track 1: Game Studies of Interactive Fiction! During the first week, we covered the history and theories of Interactive Fiction, particularly the pervasive argument that the nature of IF works are neither stories nor games. With definition arguments that define IF works as storyworlds, narrative architectures, and interactive experiences, yet distinguishing IF works from stories (i.e. IFs as "not" stories), it behooves us to understand what stories, narratives, or narrativity mean to better understand the arguments.

For our second week, we will explore the field of narratology to learn why game scholars find narratological theories significant to the field of Game Studies. Narratology is the study of the structure in narratives, and furthermore, the fundamental units that compose the narrative itself (i.e. narremes). Born from Russian formalism, structuralism, semiology, and other literary traditions, narratology has revealed the complex nature and "grammar" of narrative structures. Influential narrative theorists include Gerard Genette, Roland Barthes, Joseph Campbell, Vladimir Propp, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Ludwig Wittgenstein (their texts are also assigned in this week's reading list). Many disciplines, such as phenomenology, media studies, cultural studies, computational linguistics, cognitive psychology, feminist studies, and more, have incorporated narratological theories into their own research. Particularly interesting is the current trend in game development of applying narreme rules and structures in the procedural generation of games.

Since the field of narratology has an extensive history full of multidisciplinary scholarship, I have chosen to assign only a few notable primary texts about the field, as well as texts regarding recent studies and designs of narratives in interactive fiction and digital games. The extensive reading list below is by no means comprehensive on the body of work in narratology. However, it is my intention to show readers the richness of the field with this humble collection of texts.

Please only choose to read one or more of the assigned texts from each section (remember that you are not expected to read all of the texts assigned!). For most primary texts, lecture and personal notes are placed beneath each primary text to help clarify complex concepts. We will have a live discussion on some of the reading materials at the #Metagame Book Club G+ Community website on Sunday, April 5, 2015 at 4 pm ET (use this nifty time zone converter to figure out when the live discussion will occur in your time zone). Join our G+ Community to receive the latest notifications of upcoming webinars and discussions.

Enjoy the readings! Onward~

-- Sherry Jones (Track 1: Game Studies Facilitator)

**This week's recorded live streaming video is published at the end of the page.

What is Narratology?

• [BOOK + HYPERTEXT] “Introduction to Narratology” by Dino Felluga
• [ARTICLE] “Narratology: The Study of Story Structures” by Gordon Pradl (1984)
• [PDF] “Narratology” by Paul Cobley (2005)
• [ARTICLE] “Narratology: A Guide to the Theory of Narrative” by Manfred Jahn (2005)
• [ARTICLE] “Narratology” by Lucie Guillemette and Cynthia Lévesque (2006) (on Gerard Genette)

Theories of Narratology

• [PDF] “Unnatural Narratives, Unnatural Narratology: Beyond Mimetic Models” by Jan Alber, Stefan Iversen, Henrik Skov Nielsen, and Brian Richardson (May 2010)
• [ARTICLE] “Narrativity” by Abbott H. Porter (2011)
• [ARTICLE] “Metanarration and Metafiction” by Birgit Neumann (Dec. 3, 2012)
• [ARTICLE] “Identity and Narration” by Michael Bamberg (Aug. 23, 2013)
• [ARTICLE] “Computational Narratology” by Mani Inderjeet (Sep. 15, 2013) (on Trend of Interactive Narrative)
• [ARTICLE] “Focalization” by Burkhard Niederhoff (Sep. 24, 2013)
  • [RESPONSE] “Puzzles and Problems for the Theory of Focalization” by Tilmann Köppe and Tobias Klauk (Apr. 25, 2013)
• [ARTICLE] “Ideology and Narrative Fiction” by Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck (Sep. 30, 2013)
• [ARTICLE] “Diachronic Narratology” by Irene J. F. de Jong (Jan. 24, 2014)
• [ARTICLE] “Narration in Various Media” by Marie-Laure Ryan (Oct. 7, 2014)
• [ARTICLE] “The Narrative Act: Wittgenstein and Narratology” by Henry McDonald

Primary Texts on Narratology

• [ARTICLE] “The Structural Study of Myths” by Claude Levi-Strauss (1955)
  • [LECTURE “Claude Levi-Strauss ‘The Structural Study of Myths” by Richard L. W. Clarke (2010)
  • [LECTURE] “Claude Levi-Strauss: The Structural Study of Myth” by Jaisree Kumar (2009)
  • [LECTURE] “Levi Strauss -- The Structural Study of Myth” by Michael Bryson
• [BOOK + PDF] “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives” by Roland Barthes and Lionel Duiset (1975)
• [BOOK] “Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method” by Gerard Genette (1980)
  • [LECTURE] “Notes on Gerard Genette’s Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method” by Robert A. Lauer (2006)
  • [NOTES] “Gerard Genette’s Narrative Discourse” by Katie Flei (2013)
• [BOOK] “Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative” by Mieke Bal (2nd Edition) (1997)
• [BOOK] “Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretations” by Gerard Genette (1997)
• [BOOK] “Morphology of the Folktale” by Vladimir Propp (2nd Edition) (2003)
  • [LECTURE] “The Function of the Dramatis Personae” by Eric S. Rabkin (1999)
  • [LECTURE] “The Hero’s Three-Part Journey” by Michael Webster (Comparison between Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey and Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale)
  • [NOTES] “Propp’s Function of Folk Tales” by TV Tropes
  • [NOTES] “Literary Theory: “Morphology of the Folktale” by Vladimir Propp” by Yara Kaas (June 24, 2014)

Narrative Patterns and Story Structures

• [GRAPH] “Story Structure” by Jon Parise (March 20, 2002)
• [GRAPH] “Choose Your Own Adventure Book as Directed Graph” by Sean Michael Ragan (March 7, 2008)
• [PDF] “Situating Quests: Design Patterns for Quest and Level Design in Role-Playing Games” by Gillian Smith, Ryan Anderson, Brian Kopleck, Zach Lindblad, Lauren Scott, Adam Wardell, Jim Whitehead, and Michael Mateas (2011)

Game Studies, Narratology, and Interactive Fiction

• [ARTICLE] “Games Telling Stories?: A Brief Note on Games and Narratives” by Jesper Juul (Jan. 2001)
• [ARTICLE] “Beyond Myth and Metaphor - The Case of Narrative in Digital Media” by Marie-Laure Ryan (July 2001)
• [ARTICLE] “The Gaming Situation” by Markku Eskelinen (July 2001)
• [PDF] “Albert Goes Narrative Contracting” by Ken Newman and Robert Grigg (June 2002)
• [PDF] “From Real-World Data to Game World Experience: Social Analysis Methods for Developing Plausible & Engaging Learning Games” by Mike Dobson, Daniel Ha, Desmond Mulligan, and Chad Ciavarro (2005)
• [PDF] “Combining Web, Mobile Phones and Public Displays in Large-Scale: Manhattan Story Mashup” by Ville H. Tuulos, Jurgen Scheible , and Heli Nyholm (2007)
• [ARTICLE] “Interactive Fiction” by Keith Oatley (2012) (on the game, Facade)
• [PDF] “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Gamer: Reframing Subversive Play in Story-Based Games” by Joshua Tanenbaum (2013)
• [ARTICLE] “Roundtable: The Interactive Fiction Renaissance” by Leigh Alexander (2013)
• [ARTICLE] “Narrative Strategies” by Valerij Tjupa (Feb. 9, 2014)
• [ARTICLE] “Narrativity of Computer Games” by Britta Neitzel (April 22, 2014)
• [ARTICLE] “The Four Types of Metafiction in Video games” by James Cox (Oct. 2014)
• [ARTICLE] “A Too Coherent World: Game Studies and the Myth of ‘Narrative’ Media” by Edward Wesp (Dec. 2014)
• [PDF] “Narratives of Augmented Worlds” by Roy Shilkrot, Nick Montfort, and Patties Maes (2014)

Recorded Live Streaming Video (Review of This Week's Readings)

Published: April 5, 2015.