Meifert-Menhard Playing the Text, Performing the Future

Future Narratives in Print and Digiture
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-3-11-027239-0
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band Volume 2, 246 Seiten

Reihe: Narrating Futures

This volume examines the structure of text-based Future Narratives in the widest sense, including choose-your-own-adventure books, forking-path novels, combinatorial literature, hypertexts, interactive fiction, and alternate reality games. How 'radical' can printed Future Narratives really be, given the constraints of their media? When exactly do they not only play with the mere idea of multiple continuations, but actually stage genuine openness and potentiality? Process- rather than product-oriented, text-based Future Narratives are seen as performative and contingent systems, simulating their own emergence.

Zielgruppe

Scholars of Literary Studies, Game Studies.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Meifert-Menhard, Felicitas

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Futurologie (Interdisziplinär)
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Gattungen
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Kommunikationswissenschaften Digitale Medien, Internet, Telekommunikation
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturtheorie: Poetik und Literaturästhetik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Rezeption, literarische Einflüsse und Beziehungen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;1 Introduction: Narrating the Future in Text;11
2;2 The Tellability of the Future;20
2.1;2.1 The Shape of Narrative – The Shape of Experience;21
2.2;2.2 The Shape of the Future;26
2.3;2.3 What If…? Thinking Beyond Actuality;35
2.4;2.4 Pre-Text and Prototype: Cybertext and Ergodics;37
2.5;2.5 Shaping and Experiencing the Storyworld: Agency and Immersion;39
3;3 Textual Future Narratives – Form and Structure;43
3.1;3.1 Narrating the ‘Not-Yet’: Issues of Mediality;44
3.1.1;3.1.1 Tempting Teleology;47
3.1.2;3.1.2 Problematical Presence;49
3.1.3;3.1.3 Imagining Optionality;51
3.2;3.2 Nodes and Bifurcation: The Essence of Future Narratives;55
3.3;3.3 Architecture, Run, Protocol: A Three-Level Narratological Model for FNs;57
3.4;3.4 The Responsiveness of the System: Activity vs. Interactivity;63
3.5;3.5 A Word on the Reader or: The Reader as Player;67
3.6;3.6 The Necessity of Possibility: Do We Have to Play?;70
3.7;3.7 A Typology of Textual Nodal Situations;72
3.8;3.8 Transitions Between Nodal Situations;74
3.8.1;3.8.1 Internal Page Transitions;74
3.8.2;3.8.2 Page-to-Page Transitions;76
3.8.3;3.8.3 Shuffling;77
3.8.4;3.8.4 Link-to-Link Transitions;78
3.8.5;3.8.5 Dynamic Input;78
3.9;3.9 The Visibility of Nodes: Indication;79
3.10;3.10 How to Choose? Information;81
3.11;3.11 Narrative Negotiation of Possibility: Mediation;85
3.12;3.12 Nodal Power;88
3.13;3.13 Nodal Structures in Textual Future Narratives;92
3.13.1;3.13.1 Directedness: The Arborescent Structure;93
3.13.2;3.13.2 Circulation: The Network Structure;95
3.13.3;3.13.3 Exploring and Returning: The Axial Structure;98
3.14;3.14 Issues of Navigation and Space;100
3.14.1;3.14.1 The Spatial Topology of Future Narratives;103
3.14.2;3.14.2 Spatiality in Textual FNs;104
4;4 A Typology of Future Narratives in Print and Digiture;108
4.1;4.1 Imaginative Explorations of the Future: Chance, Choice, and the Resistance to Closure;110
4.2;4.2 What Next? Open-Ended Narrative;112
4.3;4.3 Testing the Boundaries of the Printed Format: Multi-Linearity, Multifurcation;116
4.3.1;4.3.1 Non-linearity vs. Multi-linearity;117
4.3.2;4.3.2 Problematical Presence: Multiple Endings;119
4.3.3;4.3.3 Crucial Junctures: Forking Paths;122
4.3.4;4.3.4 Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Stories;127
4.4;4.4 Text as Play: Games, Combinatorics, Multimodality;134
4.4.1;4.4.1 Game Novels and Combinatorics;135
4.4.2;4.4.2 The Multimodal Novel;141
4.5;4.5 Moving Into the Electronic Medium: Digital Multiplicity;144
4.5.1;4.5.1 Interactive Fiction;145
4.5.2;4.5.2 Hypertext Fiction;152
4.5.3;4.5.3 The Visual Novel;163
4.6;4.6 Approaching the Boundaries of Textuality: Narrative as Collaborative Performance;165
4.6.1;4.6.1 Pen-and-Paper Role Playing;167
4.6.2;4.6.2 Alternate Reality Gaming;170
4.6.3;4.6.3 Forecasting Games;173
4.7;4.7 Where Will We Go From Here?;174
5;5 Selected Readings of Future Narratives: From Print to Digiture;177
5.1;5.1 The Imaginative Exploration of Chance and Possibility: Paul Auster’s The Music of Chance (1990);177
5.2;5.2 Pick Your Own Path, Then and Now: An Inside Look at Choose-Your-Own-Adventure;186
5.2.1;5.2.1 Edward Packard, The Cave of Time (1979);186
5.2.2;5.2.2 Anson Montgomery, The Golden Path Volume One: Into the Hollow Earth (2008);192
5.3;5.3 The Novel as Branching Structure: Svend Åge Madsen’s Days With Diam or Life at Night (1994);197
5.4;5.4 Prose as Path: Jacques Roubaud’s The Great Fire of London (1991);207
5.5;5.5 Temporal Experiments in the Digital Web: Stuart Moulthrop’s Hegirascope (1995/1997) and Pax (2003);215
5.6;5.6 Do It Again, and Better This Time: Andrew Plotkin’s Spider and Web (1997–98);223
6;Works Cited;233
7;Index;245

Über Autor(innen)

Meifert-Menhard, Felicitas
Felicitas Meifert-Menhard, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany.

Felicitas Meifert-Menhard, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

Felicitas Meifert-Menhard, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.