This study describes the narratives of innovation produced in a knowledge-based company, constructs them into core stories and develops a narrative framework suitable for researching the topic. The research data consisted of thematic interviews with 23 professionals from the Finnish technology company. Innovation stories were convoluted, identifying innovation-framing contexts that were related to ownership, drivers, continuity, decisions and values. Based on these narratives, the study generated the 4Co (context, content, conflict, and compromise) analytical framework suitable for examining narrative data in innovation research. The study also produced an ideal description of innovation as a simultaneously shared and personally meaningful evolutionary learning process that takes place in small steps and requires a balance of necessity and freedom as well as decision-making based on intuition and facts, producing human efficiency as a value for employees and the organisation. Based on the findings, scientific, methodological, and practical discussions are also presented.
{"title":"Explaining the innovation dichotomy: the contexts, contents, conflicts, and compromises of innovation stories","authors":"Soila Lemmetty","doi":"10.1515/fns-2024-2007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2024-2007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This study describes the narratives of innovation produced in a knowledge-based company, constructs them into core stories and develops a narrative framework suitable for researching the topic. The research data consisted of thematic interviews with 23 professionals from the Finnish technology company. Innovation stories were convoluted, identifying innovation-framing contexts that were related to ownership, drivers, continuity, decisions and values. Based on these narratives, the study generated the 4Co (context, content, conflict, and compromise) analytical framework suitable for examining narrative data in innovation research. The study also produced an ideal description of innovation as a simultaneously shared and personally meaningful evolutionary learning process that takes place in small steps and requires a balance of necessity and freedom as well as decision-making based on intuition and facts, producing human efficiency as a value for employees and the organisation. Based on the findings, scientific, methodological, and practical discussions are also presented.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141697966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Narrative experiencers frequently report broadly differing narrative responses. Literary scholarship customarily addresses those shared by communities of readers as pertaining to implied and rhetorical readers. However, empirical reader-response research shows that flesh-and-blood readers and audience members often show idiosyncratic narrative responses based on individual experience. Storyworld Possible Selves Theory (Martínez 2014. Storyworld possible selves and the phenomenon of narrative immersion: Testing a new theoretical construct. Narrative 22(1). 110–131, 2018. Storyworld possible selves. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter) provides an analytical toolkit for the study of both culturally predictable and completely individual responses to narratives, drawing on the frameworks of cognitive narratology, cognitive linguistics, and social psychology. This study discusses the affordances and shortcomings of this framework when addressing the bearing of hegemonic cultural models on narrative response and introduces the concept of “secondary storyworld possible selves” to account for responses predictable in communities sharing non-hegemonic cultural models. This renders cultural (un)predictability as a graded category and facilitates its qualitative and quantitative exploration.
叙事体验者经常报告的叙事反应大相径庭。文学学术界通常将读者群体的共同反应视为与暗示读者和修辞读者有关。然而，读者反应实证研究表明，有血有肉的读者和观众往往会根据个人经历表现出特异的叙事反应。故事世界可能的自我理论（马丁内斯，2014 年。故事世界可能的自我与叙事沉浸现象：测试一种新的理论建构。叙事 22(1).110-131, 2018.故事世界可能的自我》。柏林：Walter de Gruyter）提供了一个分析工具包，借鉴认知叙事学、认知语言学和社会心理学的框架，研究文化上可预测的和完全个人对叙事的反应。本研究在探讨霸权文化模式对叙事反应的影响时，讨论了这一框架的优势和不足，并引入了 "次级故事世界可能的自我 "这一概念，以解释在共享非霸权文化模式的社群中可预测的反应。这就将文化（不可）预测性作为一个分级类别，便于对其进行定性和定量探索。
{"title":"Secondary storyworld possible selves: narrative response and cultural (un)predictability","authors":"Melina Ghasseminejad, María-Ángeles Martínez","doi":"10.1515/fns-2024-2006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2024-2006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Narrative experiencers frequently report broadly differing narrative responses. Literary scholarship customarily addresses those shared by communities of readers as pertaining to implied and rhetorical readers. However, empirical reader-response research shows that flesh-and-blood readers and audience members often show idiosyncratic narrative responses based on individual experience. Storyworld Possible Selves Theory (Martínez 2014. Storyworld possible selves and the phenomenon of narrative immersion: Testing a new theoretical construct. Narrative 22(1). 110–131, 2018. Storyworld possible selves. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter) provides an analytical toolkit for the study of both culturally predictable and completely individual responses to narratives, drawing on the frameworks of cognitive narratology, cognitive linguistics, and social psychology. This study discusses the affordances and shortcomings of this framework when addressing the bearing of hegemonic cultural models on narrative response and introduces the concept of “secondary storyworld possible selves” to account for responses predictable in communities sharing non-hegemonic cultural models. This renders cultural (un)predictability as a graded category and facilitates its qualitative and quantitative exploration.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141716686","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
With the increasing proliferation of the internet, audience-authored online paratexts continue to gain significance in culture and in the communicative structures of narrative texts. This article takes a critical look at the ways in which Gérard Genette’s concept of paratext (1987) has been used in contemporary scholarship. The article offers a model of online paratexts based on an interdisciplinary understanding of paratextuality and internet-age culture. Ways in which paratexts become legitimate in online environments are considered through the analysis of HBO’s popular TV series Game of Thrones (2011–2019). Legitimation extends from production-authored paratexts to audience-authored paratexts, reflecting changes in the relationship between authors and readers typical to contemporary culture. Finally, the article introduces the concept of paratextual reauthoring, which refers to the practice of canonizing alternative interpretations of texts via the use of online paratexts.
{"title":"Audience-authored paratexts: legitimation of online discourse about Game of Thrones","authors":"Markus Laukkanen","doi":"10.1515/fns-2024-2003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2024-2003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 With the increasing proliferation of the internet, audience-authored online paratexts continue to gain significance in culture and in the communicative structures of narrative texts. This article takes a critical look at the ways in which Gérard Genette’s concept of paratext (1987) has been used in contemporary scholarship. The article offers a model of online paratexts based on an interdisciplinary understanding of paratextuality and internet-age culture. Ways in which paratexts become legitimate in online environments are considered through the analysis of HBO’s popular TV series Game of Thrones (2011–2019). Legitimation extends from production-authored paratexts to audience-authored paratexts, reflecting changes in the relationship between authors and readers typical to contemporary culture. Finally, the article introduces the concept of paratextual reauthoring, which refers to the practice of canonizing alternative interpretations of texts via the use of online paratexts.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141710467","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article presents a paradoxical narrative device that is controversially discussed in narratology. Since the introduction of metalepsis into narratology by Gérard Genette in the “Discours du récit” (1972) – “Tous ces jeux manifestent […] l’importance de la limite qu’ils s’ingénient à franchir au mépris de la vraisemblance, et qui est précisément la narration (ou la représentation) elle-même; frontière mouvante mais sacrée entre deux mondes: celui où l’on raconte, celui que l’on raconte” “All these games show […] the importance of the boundary that they try so hard to cross, in defiance of verisimilitude, and which is precisely narration (or representation) itself; a moving but sacred boundary between two worlds: the world in which someone tells, and the world that someone tells” (my translation). – metalepsis was always modelled vertically. As early as 2005, Sabine Schlickers and Klaus Meyer-Minnemann proposed a horizontal modelling of this narrative device at a Paris conference on the metalepsis. In the following, I would like to take up this proposal once again, present the more recent criticism of this concept and then demonstrate the functioning of horizontal metalepsis using a series of examples from Argentinian literature and the visual arts.
本文介绍了叙事学中备受争议的一种自相矛盾的叙事手段。自热拉尔-热奈特（Gérard Genette）在《叙事论》（Discours du récit）（1972 年）中将 "metalepsis "引入叙事学以来--"所有这些游戏都显示出[......]'ils s'ingénient à franchir au mépris de la vraisemblance, et qui est précisément la narration (ou la représentation) elle-même; frontière mouvante mais sacrée entre deux mondes的重要性：celui où l'on raconte, celui que l'on raconte"（"所有这些游戏都显示出[......]它们不顾真实性而极力跨越的界限的重要性，而这恰恰就是叙述（或再现）本身；两个世界之间动人而神圣的界限：有人讲述的世界和有人讲述的世界"（我的译文）。 - 金属论文一直是垂直模式。早在 2005 年，萨宾-施利克斯（Sabine Schlickers）和克劳斯-迈耶-明尼曼（Klaus Meyer-Minnemann）就在巴黎的一次关于 "金属叙事"（metalepsis）的会议上提出了这一叙事手段的横向模型。在下文中，我想再次讨论这一提议，介绍最近对这一概念的批评，然后用一系列阿根廷文学和视觉艺术的例子来证明横向金属论文的功能。
{"title":"Horizontal metalepsis in narrative fiction","authors":"Sabine Schlickers","doi":"10.1515/fns-2024-2004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2024-2004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article presents a paradoxical narrative device that is controversially discussed in narratology. Since the introduction of metalepsis into narratology by Gérard Genette in the “Discours du récit” (1972) – “Tous ces jeux manifestent […] l’importance de la limite qu’ils s’ingénient à franchir au mépris de la vraisemblance, et qui est précisément la narration (ou la représentation) elle-même; frontière mouvante mais sacrée entre deux mondes: celui où l’on raconte, celui que l’on raconte”\u0000 “All these games show […] the importance of the boundary that they try so hard to cross, in defiance of verisimilitude, and which is precisely narration (or representation) itself; a moving but sacred boundary between two worlds: the world in which someone tells, and the world that someone tells” (my translation).\u0000 – metalepsis was always modelled vertically. As early as 2005, Sabine Schlickers and Klaus Meyer-Minnemann proposed a horizontal modelling of this narrative device at a Paris conference on the metalepsis. In the following, I would like to take up this proposal once again, present the more recent criticism of this concept and then demonstrate the functioning of horizontal metalepsis using a series of examples from Argentinian literature and the visual arts.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141692816","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A commonality among so many of Conrad’s narrators is their reluctance to reveal important information regarding the stories they tell. These narrators delay, obscure, or withhold, sometimes partly and sometimes entirely, crucial components to the tales they tell. This essay investigates why these narrators behave as they do. In some instances (as in Falk), the narrator looks to recreate in his listeners (and the reader) his bewilderment as to Falk’s refusal to tow his ship and later to Falk’s “misfortune,” as Falk terms it. In other instances, such as Typhoon and Suspense, the narrator requires the reader to supply the missing information. On the other hand, in Nostromo, for example, the third-person narrator, despite knowing so very much, regularly relies on legend, hearsay, and other similar sources in narrating the novel, thereby questioning the idea of absolute knowledge, positing instead a contingent knowledge.
{"title":"Joseph Conrad’s reluctant raconteurs","authors":"John G. Peters","doi":"10.1515/fns-2024-2002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2024-2002","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 A commonality among so many of Conrad’s narrators is their reluctance to reveal important information regarding the stories they tell. These narrators delay, obscure, or withhold, sometimes partly and sometimes entirely, crucial components to the tales they tell. This essay investigates why these narrators behave as they do. In some instances (as in Falk), the narrator looks to recreate in his listeners (and the reader) his bewilderment as to Falk’s refusal to tow his ship and later to Falk’s “misfortune,” as Falk terms it. In other instances, such as Typhoon and Suspense, the narrator requires the reader to supply the missing information. On the other hand, in Nostromo, for example, the third-person narrator, despite knowing so very much, regularly relies on legend, hearsay, and other similar sources in narrating the novel, thereby questioning the idea of absolute knowledge, positing instead a contingent knowledge.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141691539","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This work begins with an exploration of various analytical techniques for discerning and describing details of vocal performance in the song “Episodes,” from Philadelphia Hip Hop group The Roots’ 1996 album, Illadelph Halflife. I pair this musical analysis with textual exegesis drawing on narratology and speech act theory. Reconciling the two analytical approaches, I conclude by suggesting a refreshed notion of affective realism in late twentieth-century Hip Hop, characterized by consistency between poetic, phonetic, illocutionary, and performative dynamics in rap verse.
本作品首先探讨了费城嘻哈组合 The Roots 1996 年专辑《Illadelph Halflife》中歌曲《Episodes》中辨别和描述声乐表演细节的各种分析技术。我将音乐分析与文本注释相结合，并借鉴了叙事学和言语行为理论。最后，我将这两种分析方法结合起来，提出了 20 世纪晚期嘻哈音乐中情感现实主义的新概念，其特点是说唱诗句中的诗意、语音、惯用语和表演动态之间的一致性。
{"title":"“Small machines of words”: poetics, phonetics, and mechanisms of narrative realism in late twentieth-century Hip Hop","authors":"David Cosper","doi":"10.1515/fns-2024-2005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2024-2005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This work begins with an exploration of various analytical techniques for discerning and describing details of vocal performance in the song “Episodes,” from Philadelphia Hip Hop group The Roots’ 1996 album, Illadelph Halflife. I pair this musical analysis with textual exegesis drawing on narratology and speech act theory. Reconciling the two analytical approaches, I conclude by suggesting a refreshed notion of affective realism in late twentieth-century Hip Hop, characterized by consistency between poetic, phonetic, illocutionary, and performative dynamics in rap verse.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141716113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The essay demonstrates the relationship between specific figures of discourse dominant in particular novels and the thematic concerns or plot patterns of each individual novel. The figures discussed are (1) enthymeme, prominent in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and important also in Joyce’s Ulysses; (2) hypallage, part of the rhetoric of Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, reflecting its plot pattern and its cluster of concerns; and (3) blazon, which helps to convey the implied author’s critique of the attitudes of the first-person narrator of Lolita.
这篇文章展示了在特定小说中占主导地位的特定话语形象与每部小说的主题关注点或情节模式之间的关系。讨论的语词包括：（1）enthymeme，在劳伦斯-斯特恩（Laurence Sterne）的《特里斯特拉姆-香迪》（Tristram Shandy）中很突出，在乔伊斯的《尤利西斯》（Ulysses）中也很重要；（2）hypallage，狄更斯《双城记》（A Tale of Two Cities）修辞的一部分，反映了其情节模式和关注点；以及（3）blazon，有助于传达作者对《洛丽塔》第一人称叙述者态度的隐含批评。
{"title":"Figures of discourse in prose fiction","authors":"Leona Toker","doi":"10.1515/fns-2024-2001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2024-2001","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The essay demonstrates the relationship between specific figures of discourse dominant in particular novels and the thematic concerns or plot patterns of each individual novel. The figures discussed are (1) enthymeme, prominent in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and important also in Joyce’s Ulysses; (2) hypallage, part of the rhetoric of Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, reflecting its plot pattern and its cluster of concerns; and (3) blazon, which helps to convey the implied author’s critique of the attitudes of the first-person narrator of Lolita.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141712566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In 1897, congratulating Bram Stoker on the release of Dracula, the writer M. E. Braddon tries to establish precedence for herself by classifying the novel not, as we might expect, as a story of vampirism, but as one of “transfusion”. Taking this designation as its cue, this article recovers examples of what I term “transfusive rejuvenescence fiction”, in which a prolongation of life or restoration of youth is achieved via corporeal transferal. It contextualizes this sub-genre by charting how a revival of interest in blood transfusion’s rejuvenatory promise occurred alongside shifts in the attitudes to age and aging – to old age especially. Contrary to medical writers, who optimistically envisaged transfusion as an integral part of a “sentimental economy” – in which blood is donated out of “fellow-feeling” – transfusive rejuvenescence fiction raises the prospect of bloodborne youthfulness becoming commodified and circulating according to the tenets of the capitalist marketplace. In these fictions, transfusion serves as an evocative and versatile figure for expressing anxieties around the increasingly urgent question of provision for old age and the issues of intergenerational equity implied therein. To prove the argument, this article performs a comparative reading of Braddon’s “Good Lady Ducayne” and H. G. Wells’s “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham”, both of 1896. The comparable but distinctive approaches taken by these two short stories means that examining them in tandem provides us with a fuller picture of the contributions that transfusive rejuvenescence fiction made to fin-de-siècle discourses of age and aging.
{"title":"“Old things made new”: Transfusive rejuvenescence in M. E. Braddon’s “Good Lady Ducayne” and H. G. Wells’s “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham”","authors":"J. Green","doi":"10.1515/fns-2023-2004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2023-2004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In 1897, congratulating Bram Stoker on the release of Dracula, the writer M. E. Braddon tries to establish precedence for herself by classifying the novel not, as we might expect, as a story of vampirism, but as one of “transfusion”. Taking this designation as its cue, this article recovers examples of what I term “transfusive rejuvenescence fiction”, in which a prolongation of life or restoration of youth is achieved via corporeal transferal. It contextualizes this sub-genre by charting how a revival of interest in blood transfusion’s rejuvenatory promise occurred alongside shifts in the attitudes to age and aging – to old age especially. Contrary to medical writers, who optimistically envisaged transfusion as an integral part of a “sentimental economy” – in which blood is donated out of “fellow-feeling” – transfusive rejuvenescence fiction raises the prospect of bloodborne youthfulness becoming commodified and circulating according to the tenets of the capitalist marketplace. In these fictions, transfusion serves as an evocative and versatile figure for expressing anxieties around the increasingly urgent question of provision for old age and the issues of intergenerational equity implied therein. To prove the argument, this article performs a comparative reading of Braddon’s “Good Lady Ducayne” and H. G. Wells’s “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham”, both of 1896. The comparable but distinctive approaches taken by these two short stories means that examining them in tandem provides us with a fuller picture of the contributions that transfusive rejuvenescence fiction made to fin-de-siècle discourses of age and aging.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74371338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Ursula Le Guin’s novels included in Annals of the Western Shore, published between the years 2004 and 2007, have as protagonists three young characters who, among uprising, rebellion and unfair states, have to find their place in Le Guin’s the Western Shore world. The three protagonists share a gift – the gift of remembering and telling stories – which is transmitted to two of them through an older man from the community where they live. Once the main characters come together at the end of the third novel of the saga, they realise that the only way in which a free and prosperous state can be achieved is through knowledge and the sharing of the stories of both ancestors and new writers. The series, thus, problematizes the concept of wisdom associated with a binary stereotypical image of old age as either attached to loss and decrepitude or to wisdom, particularly in the fantastic mode. In this article, and following Le Guin’s belief in the intrinsic interconnectivity of all things, “organic and inorganic, material and spiritual, object and force – [that] shape and are shaped by each other” (Senior 1996: 104), we aim to explore the value of intergenerational relationships in building a fairer and more prosperous society in Le Guin’s series Annals of the Western Shore. Whereas the young characters and protagonists in each of the three novels need the guidance of older members of their communities to come to terms with their “gifts”, the coming of age of these young protagonists will also question the unfair and destructive beliefs behind the social organisation of the regimes in which they grew up and became adults.
{"title":"The wisdom of intergenerational relationships in Ursula Le Guin’s series Annals of the Western Shore (Gifts, Voices and Powers)","authors":"Maricel Oró-Piqueras, Yuliia Benderska","doi":"10.1515/fns-2023-2007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2023-2007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Ursula Le Guin’s novels included in Annals of the Western Shore, published between the years 2004 and 2007, have as protagonists three young characters who, among uprising, rebellion and unfair states, have to find their place in Le Guin’s the Western Shore world. The three protagonists share a gift – the gift of remembering and telling stories – which is transmitted to two of them through an older man from the community where they live. Once the main characters come together at the end of the third novel of the saga, they realise that the only way in which a free and prosperous state can be achieved is through knowledge and the sharing of the stories of both ancestors and new writers. The series, thus, problematizes the concept of wisdom associated with a binary stereotypical image of old age as either attached to loss and decrepitude or to wisdom, particularly in the fantastic mode. In this article, and following Le Guin’s belief in the intrinsic interconnectivity of all things, “organic and inorganic, material and spiritual, object and force – [that] shape and are shaped by each other” (Senior 1996: 104), we aim to explore the value of intergenerational relationships in building a fairer and more prosperous society in Le Guin’s series Annals of the Western Shore. Whereas the young characters and protagonists in each of the three novels need the guidance of older members of their communities to come to terms with their “gifts”, the coming of age of these young protagonists will also question the unfair and destructive beliefs behind the social organisation of the regimes in which they grew up and became adults.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82614048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021) in this article, we bring the perspectives of aging and posthumanist studies together to explore how the novel helps us to rethink our being and relationality in time beyond the boundaries of the human. In particular, we are interested in the novel’s critique of the anthropocentric privileging of youth and progress in the ways in which we imagine the future. Central to this form of imagination are generational continuity and the symbolism of the child: a new generation as a promise of the future, or rather, a better human future. Nevertheless, this novel does not simply employ the trope of generational futurity; instead, it interrogates and draws attention to the exclusionary way this type of thinking functions. Through its blurring of human and AI “child”, ultimately, Klara and the Sun suggests the dangers and the limits of a generational imagination that seeks to reproduce the same, progressive narrative of the future through the image of the child not “growing up and growing old” (Woodward 2020: 55; italics in original). Our analysis then suggests how fictional speculative modes might both engage with and yet also force us to reflect critically upon that form of future-orientated thinking.
{"title":"Futurity, the life course and aging in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun","authors":"K. Sako, Sarah Falcus","doi":"10.1515/fns-2023-2009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2023-2009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021) in this article, we bring the perspectives of aging and posthumanist studies together to explore how the novel helps us to rethink our being and relationality in time beyond the boundaries of the human. In particular, we are interested in the novel’s critique of the anthropocentric privileging of youth and progress in the ways in which we imagine the future. Central to this form of imagination are generational continuity and the symbolism of the child: a new generation as a promise of the future, or rather, a better human future. Nevertheless, this novel does not simply employ the trope of generational futurity; instead, it interrogates and draws attention to the exclusionary way this type of thinking functions. Through its blurring of human and AI “child”, ultimately, Klara and the Sun suggests the dangers and the limits of a generational imagination that seeks to reproduce the same, progressive narrative of the future through the image of the child not “growing up and growing old” (Woodward 2020: 55; italics in original). Our analysis then suggests how fictional speculative modes might both engage with and yet also force us to reflect critically upon that form of future-orientated thinking.","PeriodicalId":29849,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers of Narrative Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88971599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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