Since its inception, narratology has developed primarily as an
investigation of literary narrative fiction. Linguists,
folklorists, psychologists, and sociologists have expanded the
inquiry toward oral storytelling, but narratology remains primarily
concerned with language-supported stories. In" Avatars of Story,
"Marie-Laure Ryan moves beyond literary works to examine other
media, especially electronic narrative forms. By grappling with
semiotic media other than language and technology other than print,
she reveals how story, a form of meaning that transcends cultures
and media, achieves diversity by presenting itself under multiple
avatars.
Ryan begins by considering, among other texts, a 1989 Cubs-Giants
baseball broadcast, the reality television show "Survivor," and the
film "The Truman Show." In all these texts, she sees a narrative
that organizes meaning without benefit of hindsight, anticipating
the real-time dimension of computer games. She then expands her
inquiry to new media. In a discussion covering text-based
interactive fiction such as "Spider and Web "and "Galatea,
"hypertexts such as "Califia "and "Patchwork Girl," multimedia
works such as "Juvenate, "Web-based short narratives, and "Facade,"
a multimedia, AI-supported project in interactive drama, she
focuses on how narrative meaning is affected by the authoring
software, such as the Infocom parser, the Storyspace
hypertext-producing system, and the programs Flash and Director.
She also examines arguments that have been brought up against
considering computer games such as "The Sims "and "EverQuest "as a
form of narrative, and responds by outlining an approach to
computer games that reconciles their imaginativeand strategic
dimension. In doing so, Ryan distinguishes a wide spectrum of
narrative modes, such as utilitarian, illustrative, indeterminate,
metaphorical, participatory, emergent, and simulative.
Ultimately, Ryan stresses the difficulty of reconciling
narrativity with interactivity and anticipates the time when media
will provide new ways to experience stories.
Marie-Laure Ryan is an independent scholar and the author of, most
recently, "Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and
Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media."
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