This paper is used to study the implications that power has in a fictive story about the apocalypse. In the fictional novel, Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, there are different positions that express power and by analyzing them different attitudes emerge. This study uses the narratological model by Mieke Bal, which is used to analyze the different aspects of a text by focusing on the different dimensions of structure in narratives. To interpret the results this study uses the power and knowledge theory developed by Michel Foucault by inserting it in an apocalyptic and eschatological context. By analyzing the material one should consider the modern approach to religious authority that exists in modern adaptation, such as popular culture. Therefore, including popular culture as a culture hostile to authority, the results show that the material criticizes traditional values and norms regulated by religious authorities in society. The thesis demonstrate that the novel by Pratchett and Gaiman can be defined as apocalyptic and eschatological literature and that it contains different connotations of power in an eschatological and apocalyptic context, such as God and fatalism and also the suspense between Heaven and Hell as well with individuals. The last result shows that different attitudes towards power are present in the novel, such as social justice, fairness and independent thinking. The final result is later used to discuss how the different attitudes can be used in popular culture to influence their readers. Finally the total sum is that the characters are used to bring forth a band of various criticisms against the power displays of religious authorities in society through a selective reading of the novel.

This essay seeks to investigate how bodies can be understood as a narrative element in five poems written by the American poet Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886). Using phenomenology as understood by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Elizabeth Grosz as a theoretical framework and a corporeal narratology as drawn up by Daniel Punday, the essay explores how the bodies of the characters within the fictional world are portrayed, which bodies are present and what places and types of situations they occupy. All in order to see how the narrative as a whole is affected in each poem. The essay uses the terms body and space, as being defined by the theoretical underpinnings, to structure the analysis. The study shows that the body indeed can be understood as a way of structuring the narrative in the poems. Mainly, the present bodies are used as a way of organizing spatiality and form a specific perspective. The degree of activity of the different bodies are also dependent on normative and conventional aspects. The use of narratology when analyzing poems of this sort requires flexibility, especially since the study focuses on elements that are not always explicitly portrayed.

The inherent conflict between the predetermined nature of narrative and the freedom that interactivity allows for, has been a major point of discussion in the field of interactive storytelling for many years. The Narrative Paradox, which initially described this tension, is seemingly getting closer than ever to being solved, but a singular solution with a definite answer has not been determined. This qualitative thesis aims to find a possible solution to the Narrative Paradox in how the multimodal components in the video game Outer Wilds construct meaning as well as ludonarrative coherence in conjunction with the player experience. The study also aims to discuss the importance of implementing game studies in media and communication research by arguing for the relevance of the medium in the field. In order to answer these questions, a multimodal discourse analysis of ludonarrative relationships arising in Youtube Let’s Plays was performed. By utilizing the narrative goals of Outer Wilds, theoretical solutions for the Narrative Paradox and the notion of narrative emerging from player interactions and motives, the results of the study show that Outer Wilds primarily uses Embedded Narrative as its main source of storytelling, while the game design and the open world within it allow for a high degree of Emergent behaviors through non-linear sequencing of events. The analysis also highlights the game as being purposefully designed for a specific type of player, which was reflected by one of the players experiencing close to a completely resonant playthrough of the game's introductory phase. While the ludonarrative structure of Outer Wilds in itself revealed similarities to the theoretical solutions of the Narrative Paradox, the analysis of the player experience in Outer Wilds provided insight into the importance of players’ motives as an essential part in the game design process of minimizing the tension between narrative and interactivity in video games.

In this essay, I illustrate how the third-person present tense narrative perspective can be used as stylistic allusion to theatre, by studying Maggie O’Farrell 2020 historical fiction novel Hamnet. Previous studies conclude that present-tense narration has the effect of blurring the lines between narration and experience. However, while a first-person perspective lets the reader enter the consciousness of an experiencing “I”, the third-person perspective, although inhabiting the same spatiotemporal level as the characters, maintains an outside perspective, observing the events as they unfold. Conclusively, as the study will show, third-person present tense narration has the potential to function as stylistic allusion to theatre as it seemingly challenges reader perception, letting the reader into the experiencing level of the story, assuming the role of the observer, thus mimicking the experience of watching a stage performance at a theatre.

La presente tesina aborda la temporalidad de Maldito amor y otros cuentos (1986) de Rosario Ferré desde la perspectiva de la narratología. Se estudian no solamente las paradojas o deslindes temporales y las anacronías, sino también las coincidenciasy no coincidencias espaciotemporales (llamadas también cronotopos). Los datos analizados muestran que los cuatro cuentos que componen la colección están basados en los hechos relatados y no en el tiempo cronológico. Esto explica que los datos temporales puedan ser eliminados sin que por ello la historia se vea alterada. / The following thesis addresses the temporality of Sweet Diamond Dust and Other Stories (1986) by Rosario Ferré from the perspective of narratology. Not only are temporal paradoxes or boundaries and anachronies studied, but also spatial-temporal coincidences and non-coincidences (also called chronotopes). The analyzed data shows that the four short stories that make up the collection are based on the events narrated and not on chronological time. This explains that the temporal data can be eliminated without altering the story.

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Emotions are sometimes thought of as human universals, biological facts shared by everyone due to the place of emotions as a function of evolution. A competing theory of emotion has been developed in the field of the history of emotions, where emotions instead are thought of as less unstable historically variable categories. The field of history of emotions has contributed to a heightened interest in emotions in general, including in the places of emotions within museums and museum discourse. Emotions are not only thought of as instrumental in the service of a museum’s pedagogical or political goal but are also subjects of exhibitions in their own right. A first principle for the following work has been that museum exhibitions are discursive acts with narrative form. In this masters thesis, I have wanted to examine the ways in which museums exhibit emotions and their histories and to what extent exhibited emotion require certain curatorial considerations to function as meaningful narratives within the context of the history of emotions. Throughout, theoretical approaches are borrowed from the study of literature and from cultural studies to work toward this goal. Two case studies are carried out in which I consider the poetics of exhibition and the role this poetic plays for the interpretation of the two narratives as wholes. An exhibition about the role of the ultras type of football supporters in the uprisings of the Arab Spring was found to centrally place emotions as catalysts for ultras’ political action. The style of narrative was found to be contributing to the sharp division between implicit audience and the culture depicted that ultimately, it was argued, gave this exhibition a place within the discourse of Orientalism. The second case study was of an exhibition about the history of love, and analysis revealed a confusion of two theoretically competing meta-narratives of love within the narrative. A universal and ahistorical metanarrative of emotion was found to work against the foundation of the exhibition as historical narrative. From these two case studies, I draw the conclusion that curators wishing to exhibit emotions must carefully consider the structure of their narratives, both because of the role of emotion in self-understanding and because of the demands on a historical narrative of emotion. This is a two-year master’s thesis in Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies.

This thesis examines literary texts that represent encounters with model organisms in ways that enact an interspecies ethics that turns the narrative of bodily relationality embedded within the model organism into a source of care, friendship, respect, and mourning. My project understands model organisms as material beings as well as semiotic and narrative entities; I suggest that the very ‘materiality’ of the model organism’s body is symbolic precisely because it is designed to refer to bodies other than its own. The model organism involves a double relationality between the categories of ‘animal’ and ‘human’ because it serves as a mediator between human nature and nature at large. This is not to say that that human biology is not part of ‘nature’ but rather that anthropocentric and human exceptionalist ideologies pervade discourses of human biology and thus the model organism provides a link to our biological and corporeal ‘selves’ in a way that maintains species divisions. The texts I analyze throughout this dissertation offer alternative ways of thinking about the model organism by exposing the multiple meanings and narratives that coexist within them both as representations and as living sentient beings. This project centers around two questions: How do cultural texts represent and negotiate disconnects between how model organisms signify within scientific discourses and their broader cultural identities? How does literature specifically engage with scientific knowledge in ways that both disrupt and affirm the status of the model organism as a scientific object? / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This study focuses on the representation of masculine imagos in the South African novelist Eben Venter’s novel oeuvre and more specifically on the multifaceted nature of Venter’s delineation of masculinity. His novels Foxtrot van die Vleiseters (1993), Ek stamel ek sterwe (1996) (translated into English as My beautiful death ((2004)) and Santa Gamka (2009) were selected to represent Venter’s novel oeuvre. The male protagonist in each novel may be viewed as typical representations of masculine imagos in his novels. The workability of cognitive narratology as a literary approach to analyse and interpret novels is tested by identifying the frames and scripts within the selected novels. Cognitive frames in narratives are those backdrops against which the events take place, while the actions executed by the characters are read as cognitive scripts. These scripts create the projected masculinity imagos of the male protagonists. When reading the novels, the reader is confronted with various cognitive choices of which three are especially important. The first is the choice to discard existing ideas and perceptions in order to make room for new ideas and perceptions. The second choice is to modify existing ideas and adjust them by means of the cognitive processing of information in the novels. The last choice entails the total rejection of the new ideas. Irrespective of the cognitive processes that occur during the reading process, the representation of masculinity in the novels will inevitably have an effect on the way in which the reader will experience masculinity in future. In the characters of Petrus Steenekamp (Foxtrot van die Vleiseters), Konstant Wasserman (Ek stamel ek sterwe) and Lucky Marais (Santa Gamka) Venter illustrates the complexity of the masculinity issue due to the cultural, social and political frames with which people are encoded. This encoding is also reflected in the scripts that are determined by the characters’ behaviour and actions. Venter demonstrates sensitivity and compassion for all the characters in his novels and his representation of masculinity instils sensitivity and compassion in readers. This instilment will most probably create a better understanding of masculinity, as well as humanity, within the cognition of the reader. The most important finding is that it is indeed possible to use cognitive narratology as literary approach to analyse and interpret the chosen novels in order to make valid conclusions – in this case with regard to the complex delineation of multifaceted masculine imagos within Eben Venter’s novel oeuvre. Further deductions include those made about the appearance of different images of masculinity within Venter’s novel oeuvre and especially how the farm frame and the father/son relationship frame manifest prominently in Venter’s novels. / MA (Afrikaans and Dutch), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014