Transmedial narratology and contemporary media culture

Even though it has become something of a cliché within narratology to assert the commercial, aesthetic, and sociocultural relevance of narrative representations across media, the fact r

Transmedial Narratology and Contemporary Media Culture

Transmedial

Narratology and Contemporary Media Culture

Jan- Noël Thon

University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln and London

© 2016 by the Board of Regents of the University

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Thon, Jan- Noël.

Transmedial narratology and contemporary media culture / Jan- Noël Thon.

pages cm — (Frontiers of narrative)

Includes bibliographical references and index isbn 978- 0- 8032- 7720- 5 (cloth: alk paper) isbn 978- 0- 8032- 8837- 9 (epub)

isbn 978- 0- 8032- 8838- 6 (mobi)

isbn 978- 0- 8032- 8839- 3 (pdf )

1 Narration (Rhetoric) 2 Storytelling in mass media 3 Discourse analysis, Narrative I Title p96.n35t48 2015

302.2301'4— dc23

2015024270

Set in Minion by Westchester Publishing Services

2 The Storyworld as a Transmedial Concept 35

3 Narrative Representation across Media 71

Pa rt 2 Na rr ato r s ac ro s s M e d ia

4 The Narrator as a Transmedial Concept 125

5 Narratorial Representation across Media 167

Pa rt 3 S u b j e c t i v i t y ac ro s s M e d ia

6 Subjectivity as a Transmedial Concept 223

7 Subjective Representation across Media 265

Notes 333

Works Cited 425

Index 493

1 Animated picture in Run Lola Run 88

2 Anthropomorphic cats and mice in “Maus” 92

3 Metaphorically represented Germans and Jews in Maus 92

4 Metaphorical pig masks in Maus 93

5 Jimmy and the delivery van in Jimmy Corrigan:

The Smartest Kid on Earth 97

6 Faded turquoise color scheme and other markers of subjectivity

in Jimmy Corrigan 98

7 Jimmy remembering Thanksgiving in Jimmy Corrigan 99

8 Pictorial representation and verbal narration in

Neverwinter Nights 108

9 Verbal- pictorial representation and verbal narration in

Max Payne 109

10 A backpack full of plate armor in Dragon Age: Origins 113

11 Introductory sequence in Run Lola Run 169

12 Intertitle “und dann” (“subsequently”) in Run Lola Run 170

13 Metaleptically hesitant expression of the experiencing

I in Fight Club 175

14 The narrating I telling an extradiegetic narratee “a little bit about

Tyler Durden” in Fight Club 176

15 Tyler Durden pointing at the “cigarette burn” on the film picture

18 The diegetic Charlie Kaufman typing parts of his script in

Adaptation 181

19 Subjective narration boxes in Batman: The Dark Knight

Returns 184

20 Subjective frameless narration boxes in Jimmy Corrigan: The

Smartest Kid on Earth 185

21 Extradiegetic heterodiegetic narrator in The League of

25 Black frames marking the “mood” of the story in Habibi 191

26 The representation of writing blurring the lines of authorship

in Habibi 192

27 The representation of maps blurring the lines of authorship

in Habibi 193

28 Initial representation of Dream’s internal voice in The Sandman:

Preludes and Nocturnes 194

29 Indeterminacy of the narrator’s diegetic status in The Sandman:

Preludes and Nocturnes 196

30 The narratorial representation’s switch to the past tense in The

Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes 197

31 Intradiegetic homodiegetic narrator in The Sandman: Preludes

and Nocturnes 198

32 Narration in an intradiegetic letter in The League of Extraordinary

Gentlemen 199

33 Art Spiegelman’s self- representation in Maus 201

34 Art Spiegelman’s “authoring I” wearing a metaphorical mask

in Maus 201

35 Intradiegetic homodiegetic framing narrator in Maus 202

36 Intradiegetic homodiegetic nonframing narrator in Maus 203

37 Art taping Vladek’s verbal narration in Maus 203

38 Oscillation between different “historical truths” in Maus 206

39 The narrator is revealed to be Sandy Bravitor in DeathSpank:

Thongs of Virtue 212

40 DeathSpank takes up the narratorial duties in DeathSpank: Thongs

of Virtue 214

41 Interactive narrator in Bastion 216

42 Ludic unreliability of the narrator in Bastion 217

43 First “full- fledged” nonnarratorial representation of James Cole’s

46 The unnamed experiencing I talking to himself in Fight Club 272

47 Tyler Durden dragging the experiencing I around in Fight

Club 273

48 The experiencing I dragging himself around in Fight Club 273

49 John Nash’s (quasi- )perception of rays of light in A Beautiful

57 A priori contextual content marker of the memory sequence in

61 Nonnarratorial representation of the “contents” of

Wallace’s mind in Sin City: Hell and Back 294

62 Onset of Wallace’s hallucinations in Sin City: Hell and Back 295

63 Wallace’s hallucinations “cooling off ” in Sin City:

Hell and Back 296

64 Narratorial representation of (quasi- )perceptions in Sin City:

Hell and Back 297

65 Nonnarratorial representation of Chris’s dream in

Black Hole 299

66 Vertical (inter)subjective representation in Black Hole 300

67 Horizontal (inter)subjective representation in Black Hole 301

68 Chris’s experiencing I finishing her narrating I’s sentence

in Black Hole 303

69 Chris functioning as an intradiegetic thinking narrator

in Black Hole 304

70 Spatial point- of- view sequence in F.E.A.R 307

71 The player- controlled character’s first encounter with Alma

in F.E.A.R 310

72 Intersubjective representation in Batman: Arkham Asylum 314

73 “Detective mode” in Batman: Arkham Asylum 314

74 The first Scarecrow sequence in Batman: Arkham Asylum 316

75 Batman imagining himself as the Scarecrow in Batman:

Arkham Asylum 317

76 A hall transforming into a back alley in Batman:

Arkham Asylum 318

77 Batman imagining himself as the young Bruce in Batman:

There are a great many colleagues and friends who have, in one way

or another, contributed to my narratological thinking during the many years it took me to write this book The sheer number of people

to whom I feel indebted presents me with a problem, though, as trying

to name them all would necessarily entail forgetting to name some Hence, I will limit myself to explicitly thanking only the compara-tively few who have provided specific feedback on parts of the manuscript in its various stages of production, yet promise to thank the countless others to whom I feel more vaguely but no less sincerely indebted in person, should the opportunity arise

First and foremost, the project has been tirelessly supported, both intellectually and institutionally, by Jens Eder, Jan Christoph Meister, Marie- Laure Ryan, and Klaus Sachs- Hombach Moreover, Benjamin Beil, Franziska Bergmann, Stephan Packard, Daniel Punday, Maike Sarah Reinerth, Felix Schröter, Daniel Stein, and Werner Wolf have provided valuable feedback, either during the peer review process or

in various less formal settings Finally, David Herman and Jesse E Matz

as well as Kristen E Rowley and the editorial team at the University

of Nebraska Press have made the publication process a thoroughly pleasurable experience To all of them, as well as to the many others who will have to remain unnamed for now, my deepest gratitude!The present book is a shortened and slightly revised version of my PhD thesis in media and communication studies, which was granted the highest distinction (summa cum laude) by the University of Mannheim on March 27, 2014, and subsequently received the Founda-tion for Communication and Media Studies’ award for outstanding

research achievements Work on this thesis has been generously ported by a PhD scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation, which I hereby gratefully acknowledge.

sup-Earlier versions of parts of the argument presented in this book have previously been published, and while most of the material has been substantially revised and expanded since its initial publication,

I am grateful for permission to draw on it here:

Thon, Jan- Noël “Converging Worlds: From Transmedial

Story-worlds to Transmedial Universes.” StoryStory-worlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies 7.2 (2015): 21–53 Print.

Thon, Jan- Noël “Narratives across Media and the Outlines of a

Media- Conscious Narratology.” Handbook of Intermediality: Literature— Image— Sound— Music Ed Gabriele Rippl Berlin:

De Gruyter, 2015 439– 456 Print

Thon, Jan- Noël “Game Studies und Narratologie.” Game

Studies: Aktuelle Ansätze der Computerspielforschung Ed

Klaus Sachs- Hombach and Jan- Noël Thon Cologne: Herbert von Halem, 2015 104– 164 Print

Stein, Daniel, and Jan- Noël Thon “Introduction: From Comic

Strips to Graphic Novels.” From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels: Contributions to the Theory and History of Graphic Narrative 2nd ed Ed Daniel Stein and Jan- Noël Thon Berlin:

De Gruyter, 2015 1– 23 Print

Thon, Jan- Noël “Who’s Telling the Tale? Authors and Narrators

in Graphic Narrative.” From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels: Contributions to the Theory and History of Graphic Narrative

2nd ed Ed Daniel Stein and Jan- Noël Thon Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015 67– 99 Print

Thon, Jan- Noël “Fiktionalität in Film- und

Medienwissen-schaft.” Fiktionalität: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch Ed

Tobias Klauk and Tilmann Kưppe Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014 443– 466 Print

Thon, Jan- Noël “Mediality.” The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media Ed Marie- Laure Ryan, Lori Emerson, and Benjamin J

Robertson Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014 334– 337 Print.

Thon, Jan- Noël “Narrativity.” The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media Ed Marie- Laure Ryan, Lori Emerson, and

Benjamin J Robertson Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014 351– 355 Print

Thon, Jan- Noël “Subjectivity across Media: On Transmedial Strategies of Subjective Representation in Contemporary Feature Films, Graphic Novels, and Computer Games.”

Storyworlds across Media: Toward a Media- Conscious tology Ed Marie- Laure Ryan and Jan- Noël Thon Lincoln:

Narra-University of Nebraska Press, 2014 67– 102 Print

Thon, Jan- Noël “Toward a Transmedial Narratology: On Narrators in Contemporary Graphic Novels, Feature Films,

and Computer Games.” Beyond Classical Narration: medial and Unnatural Challenges Ed Jan Alber and Per

Trans-Krogh Hansen Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014 25– 56 Print

Thon, Jan- Noël “Computer Games, Fictional Worlds, and Transmedial Storytelling: A Narratological Perspective.”

Proceedings of the Philosophy of Computer Games Conference

2009 Ed John R Sageng Oslo: University of Oslo, 2009 1– 6

Web

Thon, Jan- Noël “Mind- Bender: Zur Popularisierung komplexer narrativer Strukturen im amerikanischen Kino der 1990er

Jahre.” Post- Coca- Colanization: Zurück zur Vielfalt? Ed

Sophia Komor and Rebekka Rohleder Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009 175– 192 Print

Thon, Jan- Noël “Perspective in Contemporary Computer

Games.” Point of View, Perspective, and Focalization: Modeling Mediation in Narrative Ed Peter Hühn, Wolf

Schmid, and Jưrg Schưnert Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009 279– 299 Print

Thon, Jan- Noël “Zur Metalepse im Film.” Probleme filmischen Erzählens Ed Hannah Birr, Maike Sarah Reinerth, and

Jan- Noël Thon Münster: lit, 2009 85– 110 Print

Thon, Jan- Noël “Unendliche Weiten? Schauplätze, fiktionale

Welten und soziale Räume heutiger Computerspiele.” puter/Spiel/Räume: Materialien zur Einführung in die

Com-Computer Game Studies Ed Klaus Bartels and Jan- Noël Thon Hamburg: University of Hamburg, 2007 29– 60 Print

Contemporary media culture is shaped by technological innovations and the move of media conglomerates from vertical to horizontal integration, which has led to a highly interconnected media landscape where intellectual property is often spread across a variety of media platforms.1 Among the effects of this technological and cultural media convergence have been the increased visibility of various kinds of

intermedial adaptations2 and the continued rise of what may be described as transmedial entertainment franchises— entertainment

franchises, that is, that transgress the borders of different “media” and hermetically packaged “works.” Influential contemporary exam-

ples would include the novel- based franchises The Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire, the film- based franchises Star Wars and The Matrix, the television- based franchises Doctor Who and Lost, the comics- based franchises Batman and The Walking Dead, or the video game– based franchises Tomb Raider and Warcraft.3 While the trans-

medial representation of characters, stories, and their worlds has become particularly ubiquitous in contemporary media culture, then,

a brief look at the rich storyworlds of Hinduism or Christianity already demonstrates that it is not an entirely new phenomenon Yet, during the last decade or so, media studies have increasingly become aware of the sociocultural significance of these kinds of transmedial storyworlds as well as the considerable theoretical and methodological challenges their study presents due to the complex forms of author-ship involved, the vast amount of material produced, and the vocal participation of fans in the negotiation of transmedial meaning(s).4

In light of a number of rather grand claims regarding the siveness of transmedial entertainment franchises and the transmedial

perva-storyworlds they represent, though, it seems helpful to take a step back and look at an even more strikingly ubiquitous phenomenon of which the latter are only a small part: regardless of whether the work

in question can be understood as an adaptation of another work and/

or contributes to the representation of a more or less consistent medial universe, whenever we read a novel or a comic, watch a film

trans-in the ctrans-inema or an episode of our favorite series on television, or play the singleplayer mode of the latest video game, we are engaging with

narrative representations Even though it has become something of a

cliché within narratology to assert the commercial, aesthetic, and sociocultural relevance of narrative representations across media, the fact remains that narratives indeed are everywhere.5 Interestingly, however, while there is a broad consensus that narrativity is a trans-medial phenomenon, much of current literary and media studies tends to focus on strategies of narrative representation in specific media, neglecting the question to what extent the strategies that can

be found there share an intermedial or, rather, a transmedial sion If one acknowledges that a significant part of contemporary media culture is defined by narrative representations, and if one accepts that an examination of their similarities as well as their differences will be able to help explain the kind of intermedial adapta-tions and transmedial entertainment franchises mentioned above as well as generally contribute to a better understanding of the forms and functions of narrative works across media, it becomes evident

dimen-that media studies need a genuinely transmedial narratology.

While there are different ways to conceptualize such a project, the kind of transmedial narratology that this book develops not only

allows for the analysis of transmedial strategies of narrative sentation and their realization within the specific mediality of

repre-contemporary films, comics, and video games (as the three narrative media with which I am primarily concerned) but also provides a welcome opportunity to critically reconsider— and, at least occasion-ally, revise— some of narratology’s more canonized terms and concepts

Accordingly, the book provides a method for the analysis of

parti-cularly salient transmedial strategies of narrative representation as

well as a theoretical frame within which medium- specific approaches

from literary and film narratology, from comics studies and game studies, and from various other strands of current narratological research may be systematically correlated, modified, and expanded

to further illuminate the forms and functions of narrative tion across media Any study of the convergent developments within contemporary media culture sketched above would arguably profit from this kind of theoretical frame as well as from the method for the analysis of transmedial strategies of narrative representation that

representa-is developed in the following chapters Nevertheless, my primary focus is neither on intermedial adaptations nor on the sprawling story-worlds that are represented in transmedial entertainment franchises Instead, I concentrate on more general questions that apply to narra-tive representations across media— whether or not they are intermedial adaptations retelling a story(world) that has already been told, and whether or not they are contributing to the representation of a trans-medial storyworld in the context of more or less complex convergent arrangements of narrative works in different media

While this book is primarily concerned with fairly fundamental questions related to the development of a method for the analysis of transmedial strategies of narrative representation and a theoretical frame that allows for the correlation, modification, and expansion of existing approaches to narratological analysis across media, then, its potential areas of application are considerably broader First, let me reemphasize that a sound understanding of the strategies of narrative representation that are employed by narrative works across media will provide a valuable basis for better understanding not only how

intermedial adaptations such as Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings

or The Hobbit trilogies, hbo’s Game of Thrones, or Lucas Arts’ ana Jones video game series relate to their respective “pre- texts” but

Indi-also how the various elements of transmedial entertainment

fran-chises such as Star Wars, Batman, and Warcraft (as well as more

“adaptation- heavy” franchises such as The Lord of the Rings, A Song

of Ice and Fire, and The Walking Dead, of course) contribute to the

representation of their respective transmedial storyworld(s) Second,

understanding the basic principles that allow for narrative meaning making across media will also provide a foundation for studies

concerned with larger- scale questions of cultural meanings, their socioeconomic contexts, and the ways both are renegotiated in the inter- and transcultural dynamics of our globalized world— which,

in turn, will offer much- needed contextualization of the transmedial

strategies of narrative representation discussed in the following chapters

Third, while I am primarily concerned with contemporary media culture (broadly conceived as spanning from the late 1980s to the

present day), these transmedial strategies of narrative representation (and, perhaps even more importantly, their medium- specific realiza-tion) are historically variable at least to a certain extent Accordingly, the method of analysis and the theoretical frame developed here may provide fruitful starting points for future studies that are concerned

with the historization of the transmedial strategies of narrative

rep-resentation on which I will focus Fourth and finally, while my interest

is primarily method(olog)ical and theoretical, a thorough examination

of the principles that govern narrative meaning making in the context

of both comparatively abstract conceptual analyses of transmedial strategies of narrative representation and more concrete narratologi-cal analyses of their medium- specific realization in contemporary

films, comics, and video games may also have some practical relevance

with regard to filmmaking, comics artistry, video game design, and the production of intermedial adaptations as well as transmedial enter-tainment franchises, in particular

Despite these broad areas of potential applications, though, this book’s focus will necessarily have to remain comparatively narrow After chapter 1 has outlined the aims and scope of the project of a transmedial narratology as it is pursued here in more detail, the book’s three main parts focus on the representation of storyworlds, the use of narratorial representation that is attributable to some kind

of narrator, and the use of subjective representation to provide “direct access” to characters’ consciousnesses as three particularly salient

(and fairly general) transmedial strategies of narrative representation

To this end, the opening chapter of each part develops a transmedial conceptualization of the respective strategy of narrative representation (that is, chapter 2 discusses the storyworld as a transmedial concept, chapter 4 discusses the narrator as a transmedial concept, and chap-ter 6 discusses the representation of subjectivity as a transmedial concept), while each concluding chapter analyzes how the respective strategies are realized across media (that is, chapter 3 examines nar-rative representation across media, chapter 5 examines narratorial representation across media, and chapter 7 examines subjective rep-resentation across media)

Throughout the following chapters, I primarily analyze feature

films such as Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run, David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, David Fincher’s Fight Club, Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects, Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation., Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind; graphic novels such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Mike Carey and Peter Gross’s The Unwritten: Leviathan, Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Craig Thompson’s Habibi, Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, Frank Miller’s Sin City: Hell and Back, or Charles Burns’s Black Hole; and highly narrative video games such as Bungie’s Halo, Remedy’s Alan Wake, Bioware’s Dragon Age: Origins, Hothead’s DeathSpank, Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Supergiant Games’ Bastion, Monolith’s F.E.A.R.: First Encounter Assault Recon, Frictional Games’ Amnesia: The Dark Descent, or Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Asylum as “single

works.”6 Yet most if not all of these narrative works are part of an intramedial series, an intermedial adaptation process, and/or a trans-medial entertainment franchise Hence, after I have developed the foundation of a genuinely transmedial narratology by primarily treat-ing the narrative works that I have chosen as examples as if they were

“single works,” I conclude by briefly revisiting the broader questions

and fields of inquiry sketched above and, once more, underscoring transmedial narratology’s potential for being contextualized, histo-ricized, and practicabilized Before I can begin discussing the relation between narrative representations and the storyworlds they represent, though, quite a few more fundamental problems related to the project

of a transmedial narratology need to be tackled

Transmedial Narratology and Contemporary Media Culture

1 Toward a Transmedial Narratology

From Narrative Theory to a Method of Analysis

Despite the fact that narrative accounts of complex historical ments are problematic in both theory and practice, the story of narratology has been told and retold countless of times in the past five decades.1 Hence, it seems neither necessary nor desirable to attempt another detailed retelling of the events that led from the pub-

develop-lication of the eighth issue of Communications in 1966 and the first

works of classical narratology within French structuralism2 to the current situation of various postclassical “new narratologies”3 differ-ing widely in epistemological and methodological orientation In order to situate the aims and scope of my approach within the nar-ratological tradition, however, it might still be helpful to discuss some

of the more prominent strands of recent research In a somewhat eclectic account of current postclassical narratology, Ansgar Nünning distinguishes eight kinds of approaches: “contextualist, thematic, and ideological approaches/applications of narratology in literary studies”;

“feminist narratology”; “transgeneric and transmedial applications and elaborations of narratology”; “pragmatic and rhetoric kinds

of narratology”; “cognitive and reception theory- oriented kinds of (‘meta- ’)narratology”; “postmodern and poststructuralist deconstruc-tions of (classical) narratology”; “linguistic approaches/contributions

to narratology”; “philosophical narrative theories”; and “other

in terdisciplinary narrative theories” (see A Nünning, “Narratology” 249– 251)

It is clearly beyond the scope of this chapter to examine all of the items on Nünning’s list, but I would still like to single out the three approaches that, according to Jan Christoph Meister, “have turned

out to be the dominant methodological paradigms of contemporary narratology” (“Narratology” 340) First, contextualist narratology

“relates the phenomena encountered in narrative to specific cultural, historical, thematic, and ideological contexts” (Meister, “Narratology” 340) (and, accordingly, complies with Nünning’s category of “con-textualist, thematic, and ideological approaches/applications of narratology in literary studies”) Second, cognitive narratology

“focuses on the human intellectual and emotional processing of narrative” (Meister, “Narratology” 340) (and, therefore, is closest to Nünning’s category of “cognitive and reception theory- oriented kinds of [‘meta- ’]narratology”) Third, transgeneric and intermedial approaches (that refer to Nünning’s “transgeneric and transmedial applications and elaborations of narratology”) include not only

research on the transmedial dimensions of narrative but also a variety

of intermedial and intramedial narratological approaches concerned

with a single medium or genre such as poetry, drama, painting, music, film, comics, or video games.4

It may be worth stressing at this point that the French structuralists

of the 1960s and 1970s already considered narrative to be national, transhistorical, transcultural,” and fundamentally transmedial in that it can occur in an “almost infinite diversity of forms” (Barthes, “Introduction” 79) However, many of these early narratologists focused less on this diversity of narrative media (or the relation between their specific mediality and the transmedial proper-ties of narrative representations) than on “a search for the laws which govern the narrated matter” (Bremond, “The Logic” 387), with these

“inter-“laws” often being found on a level so abstract as to be of little value for the analysis of actual narrative representations Overly formalistic and epistemologically naive as their works may appear from the per-spective of contemporary narratology (as well as, and perhaps even more so, from the perspective of contemporary literary and media theory), the “high structuralists” (see Scholes 157) have not only intro-duced or refined a number of influential narratological concepts (such

as “actant,” “event,” or the “story”/ “discourse” distinction),5 but their search for narrative universals also remains an important point of

reference for contemporary narratological practice, including the project of a transmedial narratology.

Even beyond the structuralist heydays of the late 1960s and early 1970s, this kind of “story- oriented” narratology was continued by

scholars such as Gerald Prince (A Grammar), Lubomír Doležel cosmica; Narrative Modes), or Marie- Laure Ryan (Possible Worlds), but the publication of Gérard Genette’s Narrative Discourse evi-

(Hetero-dently marks an erosion of this emphasis on the “story” side of the

“story”/“discourse” distinction, leading to the advent of a “discourse- oriented” narratology interested less in the structure of the story itself than in the way it was narrated Genette remains one of the best- known narratologists to this day, and the terminology he developed

in Narrative Discourse— and later refined in Narrative Discourse Revisited— can certainly be considered a “lingua franca” (A Nünning

and V Nünning 6; Onega 276; Ryan and van Alphen 112) for the ratological analysis of literary texts Still, following his repeated

nar-insistence on limiting the object domain of narratology to the “verbal transmission” (Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited 16, original

emphasis)6 of stories would obviously pose a serious problem for every attempt at “doing transmedial narratology” (as well as for every intra-medial narratological approach that does not restrict itself to exclusively

or primarily verbal forms of narrative representation)

Fortunately, while Genette’s brand of “low structuralism” proved

to be extremely successful (see Scholes 157; as well as Cornils and Schernus), his attempts at limiting the object domain of narratology

to literary and/or verbal narrative representations did not nately, though, many “codifiers of narratology around 1980” (Darby 843), in aspiring to continue the project of a transmedial narratology begun by the “high structuralists,” also adopted the project’s primar-ily programmatic nature Seymour Chatman, for example, remarks

Unfortu-in the preface to Story and Discourse that “literary critics tend to thUnfortu-ink

too exclusively of the verbal medium, even though they consume stories daily through films, comic strips, paintings, sculptures, dance movements, and music” (9) On closer inspection, however, Chatman’s treatment of narrative structure in fiction and film is not only biased

toward “the verbal medium” but also largely ignores narrative media beyond literary texts and films.7 Much in the same vein, Shlomith

Rimmon- Kenan’s Narrative Fiction is exclusively concerned with

literary texts, but still begins its introduction by emphasizing that

“newspaper reports, history books, novels, films, comic strips, tomime, dance, gossip, psychoanalytic sessions are only some of the

pan-narratives which permeate our lives” (1) Likewise, in Narratology,

Mieke Bal reflects on her vision of a “visual narratology” all too briefly, claiming that “the analysis of visual images as narrative in and of themselves can do justice to an aspect of images and their effects that neither iconography nor other art historical practices can quite articu-late” (162) without going beyond some very general remarks on what such a “visual narratology”— which she, moreover, envisions as being

distinct from film narratology— would look like (see Bal, Narratology

66– 75, 161– 170) While this gap between program and implementation remains a persistent problem, one still needs to acknowledge the impressive diversification and sophistication of narratological practice from the 1980s onward— as well as the fact that the work of pioneering scholars such as Chatman, Rimmon- Kenan, and Bal made this diver-sification and sophistication possible to begin with

The approach of the present book clearly belongs to Meister’s third dominant paradigm,8 but it is also important to note that “postclas-sical narratology      contains classical narratology as one of its

‘moments’ ” (D Herman, “Introduction: Narratologies” 2) Indeed, classical or, rather, neoclassical approaches still play an important role in contemporary narratology, as is demonstrated by a number of introductory textbooks by narratologists such as Matías Martínez

and Michael Scheffel (Einführung), Jakob Lothe, H Porter Abbott (The Cambridge Introduction), Monika Fludernik (An Introduction), Wolf Schmid (Narratology), or Silke Lahn and Jan Christoph Meister

(all of which follow, at least to a certain extent, the project of codifying narratology begun and continued by scholars such as Seymour Chat-

man [Coming to Terms; Story], Mieke Bal [Narratology], and Shlomith Rimmon- Kenan [Narrative Fiction]) Similarly, my own approach is

evidently influenced by some of the more postclassical approaches

within contemporary narratology, but it still remains partially rooted

in the (neo)classical tradition, whose heuristic potential for the sis of narrative representations across media should not be carelessly dismissed.9

analy-So, what are the defining characteristics of a (neo)classical ratology? Since Tzvetan Todorov’s coining of the term (see Todorov,

nar-Grammaire 10), a large number of narratologists such as Mieke Bal (Narratology), David Herman (Story Logic), Manfred Jahn (Narratol- ogy), Monika Fludernik (An Introduction), Ansgar and Vera Nünning, Shlomith Rimmon- Kenan (Narrative Fiction 136– 138), Marie- Laure Ryan (Possible Worlds), Wolf Schmid (Narratology), or Werner Wolf (“Das Problem”) have considered narratology to be a theory of nar- rative In addition to its status as a theory, however, narratology has always been concerned with the analysis of narrative(s) Since the

examination of the formal and aesthetic structure of literary and

“media” texts is usually also concerned with the development of ceptual frameworks for this examination, it will come as no surprise that narratology is likewise concerned with the “analysis of the tech-niques of narrative” (Bremond, “The Logic” 387) as well as with the provision of “instruments for the systematic description of all and only narratives” (Prince, “Narrative Analysis” 183), or even with the

con-development of a full- fledged “method of analysis” (Genette, Narrative Discourse 23) that does not entirely coincide with the development of

a theory of narrative While narratology as a theory of narrative

pri-marily aims at the universal characteristics of narrative in general or

narrative media and narrative genres in particular, narratology as a method is concerned with the development of terms and concepts

for the analysis of a wide variety of different strategies of narrative representation

At least in the context of this book, then, I am neither exclusively interested in “doing theory” nor in attempting to resolve the “vexed issues” (Kindt and Müller, “Narrative Theory” 210) that writers of literary and media history have to face My approach is obviously not limited to verbal or literary narrative but rather focuses on the nar-rative limitations and affordances that the specific multimodal

configurations of contemporary films, comics, and video games vide Yet I still emphasize the neoclassical task of developing a method for the analysis of transmedial strategies of narrative representation

pro-as they are realized across media As I would, moreover, argue that one of the core tasks of the project of a transmedial narratology is to provide a theoretical frame within which various (more or less) medium- specific terms and concepts can be productively related to each other (see also Sachs- Hombach), a certain amount of termino-logical and conceptual reflection is necessary, but the book’s main offering consists of a “toolbox” for the analysis of prototypical aspects

of narrative across media which can be described as transmedial egies of narrative representation Not least because the kind of transmedial narratology proposed here is confronted with a dual challenge regarding the relation between its general concepts and their specific application, however, it may be worth elaborating on the relation between abstract theoretical or method(olog)ical con-siderations,10 on the one hand, and concrete analyses of narrative representations across media, on the other

strat-Let me begin, then, with a discussion of what Gérard Genette describes as “the paradox of every poetics, and doubtless of every other activity of knowledge as well:  . . that there are no objects except

particular ones and no science except of the general” (Narrative course 23) Genette here refers to the problematic relation between the

Dis-abstract nature of narratological concepts and what Marie- Laure Ryan calls “idiosyncrasies of individual texts” (“Introduction” 33), but

Lubomír Doležel’s distinction between particularistic and istic poetics may help to state the problem more clearly: Narratological

universal-approaches that focus on developing a theory of narrative can be considered universalistic since they are “constituted by statements

about, or definitions of, generic universals” (Doležel, Occidental ics 17) Analyses of actual narrative representations can be considered

Poet-particularistic in that they aim “to describe the individuality and

diversity of particular structure” (Doležel, Occidental Poetics 72) But

the object domain of a book that focuses on the development of a method for the analysis of narrative representations would have to be

located in between the universal and the particular “Exemplification,” Doležel remarks, “is incomplete induction because it is based on a nonrepresentative sample of data; nevertheless, it preserves the role

of induction as the bridge between empirical particulars and abstract

universal” (Occidental Poetics 25) Even though the method of analysis

that is developed throughout the following chapters can be considered universal(istic) in the sense that its terms and concepts are meant to

be applicable to a wide variety of narrative representations across media, the demonstration of its analytical power will necessarily remain particular(istic), with the actual analyses of transmedial strat-egies of narrative representation that are realized within the mediality

of contemporary films, comics, and video games primarily fulfilling exemplifying functions

In light of the epistemological and methodological problems that any attempt to describe transmedial strategies of narrative represen-tation via the analysis of their medium- specific realization(s) is ultimately confronted with, however, it would evidently seem prob-lematic to base the method to be developed exclusively on a necessarily small number of case studies Hence, in order to expand this kind

of “bottom- up” or inductive mode of reasoning by its “top- down” or deductive counterpart, I will systematically take into account previous narratological research, adhering— at least to a certain extent— to

what Tom Kindt and Hans- Harald Müller describe as a criterion of continuity, which states that narratology “as a whole should take its

initial orientation from the heuristically valuable concepts of twentieth- century narrative theory” (“Narrative Theory” 212).11 Par-ticularly in light of the dual aim of providing both a method for the narratological analysis of transmedial strategies of narrative repre-sentation and a theoretical frame within which medium- specific narratological concepts can be integrated and productively interre-

lated, I will also attempt to adhere to Kindt and Müller’s criterion of neutrality Accordingly, this book’s “conceptual apparatus has to be

assembled in such a way that it remains compatible with a broad range

of interpretive orientations” (Kindt and Müller, “Narrative Theory” 212) While my interest in transmedial strategies of narrative representation

may make it necessary to shift the focus of Kindt and Müller’s siderations to a certain extent (especially with regard to the inclusion

con-of insights from cognitive theory, which I will discuss in greater detail below), a similar criterion of neutrality in fact forms the basis of how I would position my own approach with regard to contextualist and historicist approaches: although an examination of both the his-tory of narrative representations across media and the cultural contexts in which their production and reception take place might contribute to a better understanding of their forms and functions, there are still far too many unanswered questions on a basic con-ceptual level to begin painting this kind of broader picture Still, I hope that the following chapters will provide at least some useful conceptual foundations for future studies of narrative representation across media with a more decidedly contextualist and/or historicist focus

Incidentally, it might be helpful to specify how my transmedial approach relates to the two other dominant narratological paradigms

of contextualist and cognitive narratology before I go on to address the aims and scope of the former Despite the fact that Ansgar Nün-ning and Jan Christoph Meister use these terms rather confidently, it actually does not seem too clear which strands of narratological practice we are referring to when we talk about contextualism, in particular When he coined the term in 1990, Seymour Chatman (“What Can We Learn”) used it for scholars as diverse as the speech act theorist Marie Louise Pratt, the literary theorist Barbara Herrn-stein Smith, the film theorist Thomas Leitch, and the narratologist Susan S Lanser, but a decade later, Nünning characterized contextu-alist approaches as merely “applications of narratological models and categories to specific texts, genres or periods” which are mainly “con-cerned with issues that are not really germane to narratology” (“Narratology” 251– 252) While one cannot help but wonder what happened to the decidedly more ambitious research programs of the scholars originally identified as contextualists by Chatman, I have already mentioned that my interest is not primarily contextualist

in Nünning’s (or Meister’s) sense, since I do not use (existing)

narratological approaches as a conceptual basis to analyze the relation between narrative representations and their various historical and cultural contexts Even so, it seems inadvisable to fall behind the contextualist notion that narratives should be treated “not only as

structures but also as acts, the features of which— like the features of

all other acts— are functions of the variable sets of conditions in response to which they are performed” (Herrnstein Smith 227– 228, original emphases) Indeed, even neoclassical approaches primarily interested in “narrative structures” would seem to benefit from some reflection on the historical and cultural context(s) in which the pro-duction and reception of the narrative work(s) in question took place.With this in mind, the use of cognitive theory in what David Herman calls “cognitive narrative analysis” (see, e.g., D Herman,

“Narrative” 452) may arguably be regarded as a specific form of contextualism that can serve as a basis for this kind of conceptual reflection, reminding neo classical narratology of the fact that narra-tive representations are always situated Additionally, whereas

“cognitive approaches to narrative at present constitute more a set of loosely confederated heuristic schemes than a systematic framework for research on stories” (D Herman, “Narrative” 452; see also D Herman,

“Introduction”; Storytelling) in the field of literary theory, one should

not forget that cognitivism has been the dominant paradigm within film narratology since the late 1980s12 and that, therefore, quite a few

of the questions connected to the development of “models attentive both to the text and to the context of stories” (D Herman, “Introduc-tion: Narratologies” 8) have already been the subject of more or less extensive discussion “beyond literary criticism” (see the title of Meis-

ter, Narratology) A particularly persistent problem, however, seems

to be the relative amount of attention a specific narratological

approach should give to “the text” (i.e., the narrative strategies a particular narrative work uses to tell a story or, rather, to represent a storyworld) and “the context” (i.e., the processes that determine how recipients understand that story or, rather, that storyworld)

How, then, can (or should) the relationship between narratology

as a method for the analysis of narrative representations and approaches

to “cognitive narrative analysis” be defined? In an essay defending the import of cognitive (reception) theories into narratology, Jens Eder distinguishes between seven possible kinds of relations of the former to the latter: “(1) incompatibility, (2) unrelated coexistence, (3) the heuristic use of cognitive theory, (4) the modular addition and utilization of cognitive theory, (5) the partial integration of con-cepts and models from cognitive theory, (6) a narratology anchored

in cognitive theory, and (7) a narratology which is part of cognitive theory” (“Narratology” 284– 285, footnote 14) Defining this kind of relationship for narratology in general seems to be a rather problem-atic endeavor, but Eder’s graded scale might indeed prove a valuable starting point for an explication of how the specific narratological method developed in this book relates to cognitive theories

As has already been mentioned, I will draw on models from tive theory to a certain extent, so (1) and (2) can be ruled out from the beginning Yet the terms and concepts I will propose for the analysis

cogni-of transmedial strategies cogni-of narrative representation are firmly rooted

in both (neo)classical and transmedial narratology Hence, (7) and, if perhaps less clearly, (6) can be ruled out as well The remaining kinds

of relations all seem to apply to a certain extent: even though this book focuses on transmedial strategies of narrative representation and how they are realized across different media, the development

of analytically powerful and sufficiently complex narratological terms and concepts often necessitates a characterization of these strategies based on a combination of “structural features with functional, reception- dependent features” (Eder, “Narratology” 292) Drawing

on general theories of human cognition in order to hypothesize about particular reception processes is, of course, not entirely unproblem-atic, since these kinds of hypotheses about ideal readers, spectators,

or players tend to be based primarily on the reading, viewing, or playing experience of the scholar who does the hypothesizing As

David Herman remarks in Basic Elements of Narrative, “to be addressed

adequately, these questions must be explored via empirical methods

of investigation,” but in the absence of relevant empirical research, which I obviously cannot provide by myself, to draw on one’s “own

native intuitions about stories and storytelling, coupled with tions of narrative scholarship” (4) and empirically validated general theories about human cognition seems to be the next best thing.13After all, exclusively “text- centered” approaches construct hypoth-eses about reception processes, too— the authors of these studies just tend not to explicitly reflect on their “intuitions.”14 While I certainly

tradi-do not want to claim that “text- centered” approaches (to which this book belongs at least to a certain extent) constantly need to refer to reception processes, it still seems that they can profit from syste-matically problematizing the relation of the “text features” they aim

to describe to the processes of reception that form cognitive ogy’s center of attention A good example for the benefit of grounding

narratol-a method thnarratol-at narratol-aims narratol-at the nnarratol-arrnarratol-atologicnarratol-al narratol-annarratol-alysis of trnarratol-ansmedinarratol-al strnarratol-at-egies of narrative representation in cognitive (reception) theories can

strat-be found in the discussion surrounding the presence (or absence) of narrators in narrative representations across media While the pos-tulation of different kinds of hypothetical instances may prove useful with respect to certain analytical aims, it still holds that “heuristic value alone is a weak argument in favour of using a formal system in

the humanities” (Pavel, The Feud 103), and cognitive theories may

help prevent the unwarranted proliferation of analytical concepts by grounding them in typical reading, viewing, or playing experiences

of a more or less strongly idealized reader, spectator, or player.15

Mediality, Intermediality, and Transmediality

Having located my approach in relation to (neo)classical, contextual, and cognitive narratology, I would now like to provide some addi-tional remarks on the ways in which this book can be considered part

of the project of a transmedial narratology Building on a general

notion of transmediality as referring to phenomena that manifest themselves across media (medienübergreifende Phänomene), Jens Eder

and I have proposed to distinguish between three particularly ential strands of research, each associated with a more specific understanding of the term (see Eder and Thon 140) First, literary theories of intermediality tend to emphasize aesthetic and semiotic

influ-aspects, understanding the term “transmediality” as referring to (largely) “medium- free” or at least “medially unspecified” phenomena and usually focusing primarily on representational or, more generally, aesthetic strategies Second, as has already been mentioned, media studies have recently started to examine the transmedial represen-tation of (usually fictional) characters, worlds, and stories across narrative media, commonly deemphasizing representational strate-gies in favor of what these strategies represent Third, nonfictional forms of this kind of transmedial representation of “content” in the context of journalism or advertisement campaigns are also subsumed under the label of “crossmediality” within communication studies,

in particular, though this is often reduced to content being distributed

in print and online form.16

While the discourse surrounding “crossmediality” seems less evant to the issues at hand, I will occasionally touch upon the phenomenon of transmedial storyworlds that are characteristically

rel-represented by transmedial entertainment franchises such as Star Wars, Batman, or Warcraft The importance of these kinds of trans-

medial entertainment franchises for contemporary media culture

notwithstanding, the concept of transmedial strategies of narrative representation, which defines the three core parts of this book, pri-

marily pertains to the first variety of transmediality sketched above

In order to get a slightly more detailed picture of what is meant by the term “transmediality” in the following, it will prove helpful to further examine the corresponding concept’s relation to the concepts

of intermediality and (intra)mediality Drawing on Werner Wolf ’s earlier works (see W Wolf, The Musicalization; as well as W Wolf,

“ ‘Cross the Border’ ”; “Intermediality”), Irina O Rajewsky has edly proposed to define this relation (roughly) as follows: the term

repeat-“intramediality” refers to phenomena that involve only a single medium; the term “intermediality” refers to a variety of phenomena that transcend medial boundaries and involve at least two media; and the term “transmediality” refers to medially unspecified phenom-ena that are not connected to a given medium or its mediality and can, hence, be realized using the means of a large number of different

media (see Rajewsky, Intermedialität 13; as well as Rajewsky, “Border

Talks”; “Intermediality”)

Since I would argue that a transmedial narratology is not (or should not be) primarily interested in intermedial phenomena,17 it seems unnecessary to go into the details of the distinctions Rajewsky

draws between different kinds of intermediality (see Rajewsky, medialität 15– 18) Moreover, it is evident that Rajewsky is mainly

Inter-concerned with intermedial phenomena, and her conceptualization

of transmediality therefore remains relatively vague It should also

be noted that transmediality is sometimes understood as a kind of intermediality: Werner Wolf, for example, distinguishes between

“intracompositional intermediality” and “ ‘extracompositional’ mediality” (“Intermediality” 13).18 The former refers to intermediality that manifests itself within a “single work” or “semiotic entity,” while the latter “applies to any transgression of boundaries between conventionally distinct media of communication” (W Wolf, “Inter-mediality” 17), including the subclasses “intermedial transposition” and, indeed, “transmediality,” which he nevertheless understands

inter-more or less sensu Rajewsky as referring to “phenomena that are not

specific to individual media” (W Wolf, “Intermediality” 18).19 Wolf ’s explication of the various subclasses of intermediality is convincing

in many other respects, but defining the concept of intermediality so broadly that it entails the concept of transmediality seems termino-logically counterintuitive at best.20 At least with regard to the concept

of transmedial strategies of narrative representation, then, I will low Wolf ’s and Rajewsky’s understanding of the term “transmediality”

fol-as referring to “a quality of cultural signification” that tends to lege representational strategies rather than what these strategies represent, but can, for example, also be observed “on the level of ahistorical formal devices that occur in more than one medium, such

privi-as motivic repetition, thematic variation, or . .  even narrativity” (W Wolf, “Intermediality” 18)

I would still like to emphasize once more, though, that while the realization of transmedial strategies of narrative representation “is in each case necessarily media- specific,” they are “nevertheless not

bound to a specific medium” (Rajewsky, “Intermediality” 46, footnote 6) Hence, I propose to use the term “transmedial narratology” to refer primarily to “those narratological approaches that may be applied to different media, rather than to a single medium only” (Rajewsky,

“Intermediality” 46, footnote 6), and, accordingly, are mainly ested not in narrative media per se but in transmedial phenomena that manifest themselves across a range of narrative media With these further terminological considerations in mind, it appears pos-sible to more clearly define the aims and scope of a transmedial

inter-narratology Gérard Genette’s Narrative Discourse or Wolf Schmid’s Narratology, Edward Branigan’s Narrative Comprehension and Film

or Markus Kuhn’s Filmnarratologie, Martin Schüwer’s Wie Comics erzählen or Karin Kukkonen’s Contemporary Comics Storytelling, and Hans- Joachim Backe’s Strukturen und Funktionen des Erzählens im Computerspiel or Sebastian Domsch’s Storyplaying may use similar

terms and concepts from time to time, but Genette’s and Schmid’s books are works of literary narratology, Branigan’s and Kuhn’s books are works of film narratology,21 Schüwer’s and Kukkonen’s books are works of comics narratology,22 and Backe’s and Domsch’s books are works of “ludo- narratology.”23 They are all primarily interested

in the specific mediality of their respective media and, hence, none

of them is overly concerned with the development of a genuinely

transmedial perspective Similarly, works such as François Jost’s L’oeil- caméra, Matthias Hurst’s Erzählsituationen in Literatur und Film, Sabine Schlickers’s Verfilmtes Erzählen, or Jakob Lothe’s Narrative in Fiction and Film focus on the intermedial relations between literary

and audiovisual narrative representations and should be considered

as contributions to the project of an intermedial narratology rather than that of a genuinely transmedial narratology.

It has to be noted, however, that this “restrictive” understanding

of what constitutes a genuinely transmedial approach to narrative theory and analysis is not universally acknowledged Instead,

“transmedial narratology” is often used as an umbrella term for narratological practices that focus on media other than literary texts

In his essay “Toward a Transmedial Narratology,” for example, David

Herman is primarily concerned with the intermedial relations between conversational and literary narrative(s), and although he emphasizes the need for a “general theory about the links between stories and their media” (67), he does not go into much detail as to why and if transmedial narratology should entail (more than) such a

theory Likewise, in the glossary of Basic Elements of Narrative, which

deals with a range of narrative media from a transmedial perspective, Herman effectively limits himself to stating that transmedial narratology

is concerned with “storytelling practices in different media” (194) Marie- Laure Ryan, who is still one of the most prolific scholars in the field today, uses the term “transmedial narratology” interchangeably with terms such as the “study of narrative across media” (“Intro-

duction” 1), “narrative media studies” (“Introduction” 33, original

emphasis), “the study of the realization of narrative meaning in various media” (“On the Theoretical Foundations” 1), and/or “the transmedial

study of narrative” (Avatars 4) Once again, it remains unclear whether the label “transmedial narratology” implies a more distinctly trans- medial perspective than a label such as “narrative media studies.”

Evidently, the broad field of “narrative media studies” has been affected by the boom of what Manfred Jahn and Ansgar Nünning have called the “narratological industry” (“Forum” 300), but I would maintain that a genuinely transmedial narratology is not (or should not be) the same as a collection of medium- specific narratological

terms and concepts Ryan’s influential anthology Narrative across Media is symptomatic in this respect, as the majority of contributions

are concerned with the specific mediality of a single narrative medium (exceptions are the introduction by Ryan and the contributions by David Herman and Liv Hausken) This shortcoming might be explained with the limitations of an essay collection, but the problem

of “media expertism”24— that is, the fact that most scholars specialize

in one or two narrative media— indeed seems to be a major pragmatic problem of the still emerging field of transmedial narratology Nicole

Mahne’s Transmediale Erzähltheorie may serve to further illustrate

this point: the small volume consists of an introductory chapter prisingly light on theory and five largely independent chapters