Collaborative Storytelling and Joint Biographies in the Contemporary British Novel

Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-3-86821-831-2
Verlag: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier

Buch, Englisch, 198 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 225 mm, Gewicht: 419 g

Reihe: ELCH

The socio-cognitive dimension of stories has been one of the top priorities of literary scholarship for the last two decades, but more specific forms such as collaborative storytelling have received little scientific attention in both narratology and literary-linguistic studies. Situated in a conversational medium, collaborative storytelling is defined by a dynamic communicative structure due to the number of communication partners and the constant addition of, and, implicitly, discussion of the new elements in the story they co-narrate. ‘Co-narration’ and ‘stance’ are used as key concepts in illustrating how multiple autodiegetic storytellers undertake the joint communicative venture of storytelling to co-construct and co-tell the story together as a narrative group. On this account, the conception of narrative as a collaborative communicative project is examined in light of theories of co-narration, stance, and intersubjectivity at the crossroads of fields such as narratology, conversation analysis, sociolinguistics and discursive psychology. With a particular focus on the relationship between literary discourse and the narrating agents’ intersubjective stances to co-tell the story, this study links aspects of story production and construction to specific mechanisms of collaborative storytelling in six multi-narrator novels in contemporary British fiction.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Vasiloiu, Dorina-Daniela

Inhaltsverzeichnis

CONTENTS

PART I: A PRELIMINARY OUTLINE OF COLLABORATIVE NARRATIVE,
WITH A GLIMPSE INTO CONTEMPORARY BRITISH
MULTI-NARRATOR NOVELS

1. Introduction to Collaborative Storytelling ........................................... 1
1.1 Bridging the Concepts of Co-narration and Stance .............................. 3
1.2 Definitions, Potential Benefits of Key Concepts,
and Research Questions ....................................................................... 9
1.3 Text Corpus and its Relevance to the Study .......................................12
1.4 Aims, Methods and Structure .............................................................13

PART II: ESTABLISHING A THEORETICAL GUIDE TO CO-NARRATION AND
ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR NARRATIVE AND THE NARRATIVE GROUP

2. Founding Principles of Collaborative Narrative .................................20
2.1 A Socio-cognitive Approach to Co-narration .....................................22
2.1.1 Communicative Aspects in Collaborative Narrative ................27
2.1.2 Fictional Co-narration: Definition, Functions, and
Representations .........................................................................32
2.2 The Concept of Stance: Definition(s) and Discursive Implications
for Collaborative Narrative .................................................................34
2.3 Taking Intersubjective Stances to Co-tell the Story ............................39
2.4 An Analytical Toolkit to Explore Co-narrators’ (Inter)Activity .........44
2.4.1 The ‘Shared Reporting Space’: Definition and Significance
in the Analysis of Fictional Co-narration ..................................47
2.4.2 The Narratee as a ‘Co-narrator-in-waiting’ ..............................53
2.4.3 A Grading Scale for the Communicative Structure of
Literary Co-narration ................................................................56

PART III: EXPLORING THE CONCEPT OF CO-NARRATION IN CONTEMPORARY
BRITISH NOVELS

3. The Low Dialogic Level: Andrea Levy’s
Never Far From Nowhere (1996) and Small Island (2004) ................61
3.1 Andrea Levy’s Never Far From Nowhere ..........................................63
3.1.1 Olive and Vivien, a Conversational Duet to Co-tell
Shared Story Events ..................................................................64
3.1.2 Co-constructing a ‘Joint Biography’ in (Dis)Agreement ..........68
3.2 The Discursive Shaping of ‘Togetherness’ through the Four
Co-narrators’ Stances in Andrea Levy’s Small Island ........................75
3.3 Concluding Remarks ...........................................................................82

4. Moving up the Grading Scale of Narrative Communication
Dynamics ............................................................................................84
4.1 A Co-constructivist View of the ‘Narrating Duet’ (and its
Conceptual Benefits) in Andrew Greig’s That Summer ......................85
4.1.1 Narrative Duetting and the (Re)construction of Theories
of Everyday Events ...................................................................86
4.1.2 Stella and Leonard, a Story of Shared Affects:
The Affective Stance ................................................................96
4.2 Four Co-narrating Protagonists on ‘A Long Way Down’ Together .... 101
4.2.1 “We Three Became Four”, in Search of Meaningfulness
in a Shared Socio-Communicative Context:
The Epistemic Stance .................................................................. 104
4.2.2 Possible Benefits of Collaborative Storytelling to the
Narrative Group and Co-participants ......................................117
4.3 Concluding Remarks .........................................................................124

5. A Talk-in-interaction Approach to Fictional Collaborative
Narrative .................................................................................................. 125
5.1 Goodwin’s Conception of ?Narrative as Talk-in-interaction’ ...........126
5.2 Julian Barnes’ Talking It Over (1991) and Love, etc. (2000) ............129
5.2.1 Stuart, Oliver, and Gillian as Constant Co-narrators ..............135
5.2.2 Occasional Co-participants in the Narrative Trio’s
Conversational Context: Roles and Contributions ..................140
5.3 “Sometimes Just Getting Them to Talk Helps”: Co-narration
as an Opportunity for Group Therapy ...............................................149
5.4 ‘You’ as a Co-narrator-in-waiting.....................................................153
5.5 Concluding Remarks .........................................................................162

6. Conclusions .......................................................................................163
6.1 An Overview of the Main Findings ..................................................163
6.2 Further Lines of Enquiry into Fictional Co-narration .......................168

References .................................................................................................170

Primary Literature .....................................................................................170

Secondary Literature .................................................................................170