This thesis has conducted an extensive character analysis of Sherlock Holmes by comparing the original, authentic detective, as he appears in a corpus consisting of Conan Doyle’s collected works about Holmes, to the characterisation in three select period pastiches. The aim was to analyse to what extent the true characterisation of the famous sleuth has survived in contemporary adaptations, more specifically in the three texts, Sherlock Vs. Dracula (1976), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes (1979) and Sherlock Holmes and the Angel of the Opera (1994), where the detective encounters equally well-known fictional characters. The novel approach of combining corpus stylistic quantitative methods of characterisation with a qualitative literary approach of identifying similar stylistic and narratological features of characterisation efficiently facilitated an illustration on how Conan Doyle’s round and complex character has endured through adaptations and reimaginings. The corpus investigation on the Sherlock Conan Doyle Corpus supplied an encompassing image of the character, and revealed characteristics absent from the inherent cultural perception. The subsequent cross-comparison between the original in contrast to contemporary characterisations presented clear deviations to the character and further demonstrated a tendency to exaggerate select, generic features that complement the narrative and plot of the integrated novels. Overall, this study concludes that Sherlock Holmes remains the character who travels over time and genres, albeit with a reduced complexity as the respective characterisations in each of the pastiches to various degrees have modified core characteristics significant to the mind-modelling process. That is, through the process of adaptational alterations, the detective has become a flat character. Enough features persist for him to be recognisable and compelling, yet Sherlock Holmes in his entirety subsists merely as a caricature of his original self.

Insekter har länge innehaft en undanskymd plats inom litterära djurstudier, och tidigare forskning har i viss utsträckning berört skildrandets svårigheter. Den här uppsatsen vill istället rikta uppmärksamheten mot litterära insektsskildringars mer-än-antropocentriska potential. Uppsatsens primära syfte är att belysa och diskutera hur insekter, samt hur mötet och förhållandet mellan människa och insekt framställs i tre utvalda verk. En betoning ligger på att uppmärksamma form- och innehållsmässiga framställningsstrategier som kan uppfattas som mer-än-antropocentriska.  De tre analyserade verken är Maurice Maeterlincks La vie des abeilles (1901), Leena Krohns Tainaron: postia toisesta kaupungista (1985), samt Bernard Werbers Les Fourmis (1991), och tillvägagångssättet har i viss mån varit inspirerat av ytläsning (surface reading). I analysen används även begrepp och tankegångar som förekommer inom djurstudier och närliggande fält. Analysen visar bland annat vilka strategier som har använts för att undvika grov antropomorfism och överdriven distansering, samt vilka strategier som använts för att undvika att positionera insekter i stereotypa roller i förhållande till människor. Analysen visar också hur verkens mänskliga jaginstanser låter sig påverkas och omformas i mötet med insekter, samt föreslår att läsaren i sitt möte med texterna kan påverkas på ett liknande sätt. Vidare tyder analysen på att skönlitterära insektsskildringar kan vara svåra att placera in i generella modeller för berättelser om djur.

The aim of this thesis was to analyze how the discourse between the two main characters in Richard Yates’s novel Revolutionary Road implies complex power dynamics concerning identity formation. The analysis has been conducted by the use of positioning theory as well as the critical lens of the Heterosexual Matrix in order to discuss positioning findings in relation to gender formation. The results show that the positionings in discourse between Frank and April reveal great and detrimental power dynamics entrenched in social and cultural practices as well as predetermined ideas of gender identity. This thesis has also addressed how the knowledge of such complexity in discourse can be analyzed in the Swedish EFL classroom. This has been argued for by demonstrating the use of the discursive tool of positionings and the gender critical lens of the Heterosexual Matrix in the classroom to validate the use of Revolutionary Road as a source to raise awareness of gender consciousness and encourage students to become conscious gender actors in their social life.

Automatic understanding of stories is a long-time goal of artificial intelligence and natural language processing research communities. Stories literally explain the human experience. Understanding our stories promotes the understanding of both individuals and groups of people; various cultures, societies, families, organizations, governments, and corporations, to name a few. People use stories to share information. Stories are told –by narrators– in linguistic bundles of words called narratives. My work has given computers awareness of narrative structure. Specifically, where are the boundaries of a narrative in a text. This is the task of determining where a narrative begins and ends, a non-trivial task, because people rarely tell one story at a time. People don’t specifically announce when we are starting or stopping our stories: We interrupt each other. We tell stories within stories. Before my work, computers had no awareness of narrative boundaries, essentially where stories begin and end. My programs can extract narrative boundaries from novels and short stories with an F1 of 0.65. Before this I worked on teaching computers to identify which paragraphs of text have story content, with an F1 of 0.75 (which is state of the art). Additionally, I have taught computers to identify the narrative point of view (POV; how the narrator identifies themselves) and diegesis (how involved in the story’s action is the narrator) with F1 of over 0.90 for both narrative characteristics. For the narrative POV, diegesis, and narrative level extractors I ran annotation studies, with high agreement, that allowed me to teach computational models to identify structural elements of narrative through supervised machine learning. My work has given computers the ability to find where stories begin and end in raw text. This allows for further, automatic analysis, like extraction of plot, intent, event causality, and event coreference. These tasks are impossible when the computer can’t distinguish between which stories are told in what spans of text. There are two key contributions in my work: 1) my identification of features that accurately extract elements of narrative structure and 2) the gold-standard data and reports generated from running annotation studies on identifying narrative structure.

Denna uppsats har i syfte att analysera tilltalen i fyra samtida ungdomsromaner: Grim (2021) av Sara Bergmark Elfgren, Fula tjejer (2020) av Johanna Lindbäck, Lisa Bjärbo och Sara Ohlsson, Bergtagen (2020) av Camilla Sten och A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (2019) av Holly Jackson. Metoden och den huvudsakliga teorin är baserade på Barbara Walls The Narrative Voice: The Dilemma of Children’s Fiction från 1991 och hennes användning av narratologiska koncept om berättarperspektiv för att avgöra om en bok är skriven för barn. Analysen visar hur de fyra romanerna använder olika och unika sätt att tilltala de implicita unga läsarna. Den implicita författaren syns ibland via berättarens röst, beroende på vilket berättarperspektiv romanerna har. I slutändan är det dock svårt att försöka definiera ungdomslitteraturgenren på samma sätt som Wall definierar barnlitteratur. Jag menar att man skulle behöva överväga ungdomslitteraturens unika förutsättningar samt dess läsare för att försöka definiera genren ännu tydligare. / This thesis aims to analyse the narrative address of four contemporary novels for young adults: Grim (2021) by Sara Bergmark Elfgren, Fula tjejer (2020) by Johanna Lindbäck, Lisa Bjärbo och Sara Ohlsson, Bergtagen (2020) by Camilla Sten, and A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (2019) by Holly Jackson. The method and main theory are based on Barbara Wall’s The Narrator’s Voice: The Dilemma of Children’s Fiction from 1991 and her use of narratological concepts of narrative perspective to determine if a book is written for children. The analysis shows how the four novels use unique and different approaches to address their implied young readers. The implied author can sometimes be shown through the narrator’s voice, depending on which narrative perspective the novels have. In the end, however, it is difficult to try to define the genre of young adult fiction in the same way that Wall defines the genre of children’s fiction. I argue that one would need to consider the unique conditions of young adult literature and its readers to try to define the genre even clearer.

In the fields of game design and interactive storytelling, it is of value to consider game mechanics, narrative design, and how they connect and influence each other. Dubbelman’s Narrative game mechanics theory (2016) started an argumentation that certain game mechanics can serve greater narrative power. This research sees a lack of practical considerations and game development guidelines from Dubbelman’s work and tries to conduct a theoretical framework on useful narrative and game design theories and practical considerations focusing on a subset of game mechanics, numerical narrative game mechanics. The framework covered an in-depth explanation of the process from mechanics to narratives, the role of the player during the narration process and related practices one can utilize, an analytical perspective of numerical elements and numerical mechanics, and ways to improve narratability and representation of contexts. Three case studies of existing games are also conducted to present the use of the framework and improve its applicability.

Abstract Cognitive narratology constitutes the study of mind-related aspects of storytelling embracing the nexus of narrative and mind. Theorists in the sphere of cognitive narratology believe that the mental capacities of the reader provide basis for narrative experience involving him or her in the process of co-creation of narrative worlds. This paper examines how The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams engages the reader in the process of co-creation of the narrative world of these novels. The theory of narrative worldmaking is the theoretical framework of this thesis. The analysis of Adams’s novels is structured around three key parameters for the narrative worldmaking: characters, space, and time. As this thesis demonstrates, characters, space, and time as the key elements of Adams’s storytelling strategy prompt readers to use their imagination to a high degree to co-create the narrative world of the novels. / Kognitiv narratologi innebär studie av sinnesrelaterade aspekter av berättande som omfattar kopplingen mellan berättelse och sinne. Teoretiker inom sfären av kognitiv narratologi tror att läsarens mentala kapacitet utgör grunden för narrativa erfarenheter som involverar henom i processen för medskapande av narrativa världar. Den här uppsatsen undersöker hur Liftarens Guide till Galaxen av Douglas Adams engagerar läsaren i ett samskapande av den narrativa världen i dessa romaner. Teorin om narrativt världsskapande är det teoretiska ramverket för denna uppsats. Analysen av Adams romaner är uppbyggd kring tre nyckelparametrar för det narrativa världsskapandet: karaktärer, rum och tid. Som denna uppsats visar, får karaktärer, rum och tid som nyckelelement i Adams berättarstrategi läsarna att använda sin fantasi i hög grad för att samskapa romanernas berättande värld.

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The purpose of this study is to highlight how Pär Lagerkvist’s fictional dwarf, a symbol of the deformed in man but is not always visible on the outside, despises weakness and peace and how the desire for power is expressed in the novel. These aspects in turn lead to contempt for love and mercy, the absence of which implies hostility, something that has moral consequences. The overall moral theme is highlighted from an anti-Nazi perspective through the three images of women with the help of the narratological concept of unreliable narrator. The material used as a basis for the study is the first edition of Lagerkvist’s novel The Dwarf from 1944. Primarily, narratological theory has been used with regard to the concept of unreliable narrator, something that belongs to modern narratology and fiction theory. Unreliable storytelling means that there is a difference between this discourse and the sanctioned content. The unreliable narrator has emerged as a concept in relation to the implicit author. To highlight the anti-Nazi perspective, I have used the moral philosopher Harald Ofstads Vårt förakt för svaghet. The power-theme which is central to the novel, is highlighted on the basis of Nietzsche, who according to Urpu-Liisa Karahka is important in the reading of Lagerkvist in general. Close reading, thematic analysis and narratological method are the methods applied in this study. Christer Johansson has presented and summarized an interesting starting point based on Wayne C. Booth, for narratological analysis where he works with four possible variants for unreliable storytelling. In terms of main results, the question of the dwarf as an unreliable narrator and example of Nazism in relation to the three female charachters show eight cases of false facts, four cases of misinterpretations of correct facts, eight cases regarding how a fictional narrator can make unreliable value judgements about certain fictional facts or circumstances, and finally four cases of how a fictional narrator can express unreliable perceptions of a more general kind, not directly related to individuals in the fictional world.

This licentiate thesis investigates fiction writing and reading in up- per secondary school in Sweden. Inspired by fanfiction I created a teaching project of derivative writing in which the students in a se- cond-year social science class wrote short stories derived from 20th century novels. They also gave peer response, both orally and in writing. Finally they wrote a reflective text about the project. The main purpose of the study is to describe and analyse the teaching project. The primary material is the students’ short sto- ries. Drawing from theories of intertextuality, most notably Genette’s transtextuality theory and fanfiction theories, I analyse how the students make use of the source text. Theories of narratology have been used to analyse techniques of storytelling, mainly characterization and focalization. In the analysis of the stu- dents’ written comments on each other’s texts I draw from re- sponse theories. The results show that the students tend to stay close to the source texts. The most common subgenre is refocalization, that is to change the perspective to one of the secondary characters’ view. Refocalization seems to be an efficient way of deepening the under- standing of the main character of the source text; in many of the students’ stories the protagonist functions as the focalized object. Which novel the students read plays an important part in how fo- calization is expressed, however. Short stories based on novels with complex focalization tend to be focalized in a variety of ways whereas stories based on novels with fixed focalization mostly fol- low the pattern of the source text. Reading the short stories and, not least, the reflective texts it becomes evident that the characters  are extremely important in this kind of literature, more so than semiotic theories of characters have acknowledged; the characters are more than merely functions. In the chapter about peer response I argue that many students write analyses of the text they are about to respond to rather than give advice about how to proceed. It is difficult to see if the response is of any help to the writer. Thus, I question whether peer response has any other effect than strength- ening the social bonds between the group members. The study shows that creative writing could very well be an in- tegral part of the education in Swedish in upper secondary school. Derivative writing may function as an alternative to traditional lit- erary analyses. Refocalizing is a way of seeing the story from a dif- ferent viewpoint, which could enhance the students’ sense of empa- thy. Questions of focalization might also lead to discussions of power. Furthermore, creative writing may make the students more attentive as writers. In the new syllabus Gy 11, however, the op- portunities for working with creative writing are, unfortunately, limited.