ABSTRACT In loosely structured narrative interviews, individuals discussed their personal religious life stories in the context of their lives, from childhood to the present. They ended up creating coherent narratives that encompassed much more than their religious traditions. The coherency of their stories was through the use of dispositions. Dispositions are the common themes, people, or other narrative schema which the narrator used consistently throughout the story, and are identified by narrative elements that repeat and anchor the narrative. Dispositions found in interviews for the Religious Life Stories Project by the GSU Religious Studies Department include familial, outlier, socioeconomic, contributive, influential, obedient, somatic, and traveler. Analysis of the dipositions in the context of these narratives illuminates the variety of ways traditional religion manifests in individuals’ lives. Furthermore, dispositions provide a theoretical basis for studying individual religion comparatively across doctrinal religious traditions.

This project examines Cather’s experimentation with conflicting voices of narrative authority in the presentation of four central female characters in The Professor’s House, using St. Peter and an entity termed the implied narrator as lenses through which we view other characters. The project is broken down into four chapters, each dealing one addressing the central issues involving that specific female character.

This paper was developed from my reflections on an interdisciplinary critical making experiment in which I, visual artists, and computer programmers wrote, designed, and made a videogame, entitled Anathema, and a "Complete Companion" for the game that served as its booklet. I argue for the importance and continuing relevance of booklets and other textual objects accompanying videogames as there is no established scholarship on the topic and no ongoing debate or dialogue on the issue within the field of game studies. I demonstrate the ways that multiple modes of media, i.e. the game and its external objects, allow the narrative to break free of the individual media's constraints and overcome the perceived binary between mechanics-oriented and narrative-oriented videogames. I examine the evolution of booklets' roles in videogames by looking at key examples from early, millennial, and contemporary examples, including F-Zero, Diablo II, and the Mass Effect series. I also compare examples across genres, markets, and distribution methods, including independently produced and digitally distributed games. Finally, I draw on my own work on Anathema, the relationship between form and content within that project, and the role of the booklet therein to demonstrate the narrative and mechanical advantages of a multi-modal videogame. I conclude that while innovative mechanics can contribute to a multi-modal narrative in-game, the incorporation of both analogue and digital textual objects facilitates a more complete interaction with the art form.

Notable in Jackie Kay’s Trumpet, a story about a jazz musician that all his adult life pretended to be a man, is the many voices that bring their stories to the novel. The voices give life to Joss Moody, who recently passed away, by telling stories of and about him. This essay concerns gender and identity in the light of narration: how stories can be considered the basis of existence. Drawing from five statements regarding narratology and the theories on identity of Judith Butler I will present my claim that all that is needed to create one’s identity are stories that are told. Joss Moody’s life moves beyond binary thinking and in consequence his story and the discussion of it will do so as well. This essay deals with Joss’s family, Millie and Colman, and their stories in the aftermath of Joss’s death as well as journalist Sophie Stones who wants to create her own story of Joss’s life to sell. Together they all bring their perspective on ideas of narration and identity.

In recently years, the online short films has become the most popular activity among the netizens of Taiwan. It was due to the improvement of online streaming technology, the increasing of network bandwidth, and the widespread of mobile device. Besides, the video recording and editing equipment have getting cheaper, and also more user-friendly. All these transformations have turned one-way passive audience into two-way positive ¡§Prosumer¡¨. The rising of online short films is the breakthrough of the traditional movie production, which empowered ordinary people to create their own videos. And, YouTube is the most popular ¡§stage¡¨ for amateur videos. Both the ¡§Cathedral style¡¨ videos of specialists and ¡§Bazaar style¡¨ videos of amateurs coexist and prosperous on the video-sharing website. The researcher, as a video amateur, was very curious about the ¡§carnivalization¡¨ of the online short films, and hope to investigate this effect through practice. This research takes the action research as the main research approach, and the content analysis as the supplement. The research process is divided into two stages. At the first stage, researcher analyzed the video content of ¡§YouTube¡¦s most viewed video¡¨ in order to find out what elements do these high click-through rate videos have in common. At the Second stage, the researcher implemented the action research base on the results of previous content analysis. The videos made by the researcher categorize as business-oriented and non-commercial oriented, in order to discover how these online short films constructed the carnivalization of the audience. The findings of this research could summarize into three main points. First, there are four important elements of YouTube¡¦s most viewed videos, which are ¡§music¡¨, ¡§love affair¡¨, ¡§joy¡¨ and ¡§story¡¨. Second, the business-oriented online short films construct the carnivalization of audience by ¡§culture identity¡¨, ¡§anti-normal performance¡¨, and ¡§sex appeal¡¨. Third, the non-commercial oriented online short films construct the carnivalization of audience by ¡§phonetic difference" game, ¡§nationalism¡¨, and ¡§cussing¡¨. Both of the carnival factors can be used in business-oriented or non-commercial oriented films, but the operating skills and strategy are quite different.

<p>Notable in Jackie Kay’s <em>Trumpet</em>, a story about a jazz musician that all his adult life pretended to be a man, is the many voices that bring their stories to the novel. The voices give life to Joss Moody, who recently passed away, by telling stories of and about him. This essay concerns gender and identity in the light of narration: how stories can be considered the basis of existence. Drawing from five statements regarding narratology and the theories on identity of Judith Butler I will present my claim that all that is needed to create one’s identity are stories that are told. Joss Moody’s life moves beyond binary thinking and in consequence his story and the discussion of it will do so as well. This essay deals with Joss’s family, Millie and Colman, and their stories in the aftermath of Joss’s death as well as journalist Sophie Stones who wants to create her own story of Joss’s life to sell. Together they all bring their perspective on ideas of narration and identity.</p>

This paper explores how Charles Dickens’s use of a female narrator in Bleak House (1853) fundamentally problematizes and undermines his use of the fairy tale’s cultural cachet, motifs, and characters to prop up and project his fantasies of the feminine ideal. More specifically, it examines the effects of the thematic presence of several tale-types and stock fairy tale figures on Dickens’s ability to prescribe ideal feminine behaviors, such as incuriosity and selfless obedience, to both his characters and his female audience. Because Esther’s ability to write and her interest in either discovering or constructing her own identity establish her as competitor to the males who attempt to script her life, Dickens tries to control and circumscribe her ability to know and act through her own and other characters’ resemblance to traditional fairy tale character types, especially Bluebeard and Griselda. Esther’s narrative, however, betrays these unnatural delimitations in telltale interruptions and denials as Dickens attempts to circumvent the constraints he has placed on her voice. Esther’s narrative therefore resists but imperfectly overcomes the Victorian male author’s scripting of femininity. / text

This thesis analyses the function of the detective in Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz. I argue that the modernist metropolis Berlin challenges the way in which crimes are solved by complicating the process of identifying those responsible for them. The ambivalence of life makes it impossible to get to the truth of crime. This ambivalence, partly created by the urban context, leads to the reinvention of the role of the detective. No longer located in the individual, the function of the detective is shared among author, narrator, protagonist, reader, and the city, whereby the protagonist Franz Biberkopf (on the intra-textual level) and the reader (on the extra-textual level) are the major players. However, neither Biberkopf nor the reader succeeds in this process, but are forced to accept the solution suggested by the text. The thesis adopts a narratological approach in analysing the narrative processes of veiling and unveiling facts and circumstances. It demonstrates how Biberkopf’s specific perception of urban space and his attempt to give it a particular shape in his imagination, as well as the complex relationship of story and discourse in the novel, contribute to the obfuscation of fact and fiction. / Thesis (Master, German) -- Queen's University, 2009-08-17 10:47:07.25

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka de narratologiska drivkrafterna i de två postapokalyptiska verken The Stand av Stephen King och Girlfriend In a Coma av Douglas Coupland. Med frågor som: Vad är den narratologiska drivkraften? Med kulturkritisk infallsvinkel: vad för karaktärerna med sig in i den nya tiden? Genom närläsning kommer en undersökning ske, där de narratologiska drivkrafterna lyfts fram. Resultatet visar att författarna har använt sig av två olika tekniker. The Stand använder sig av motsatspar enligt A.J. Greimas aktantmodell medan Girlfriend In a Coma använder skiftande fokalisering och berättarröst som narratologisk drivkraft. Båda verken har en katastrof som gemensam faktor. Denna katastrof är den grundläggande narratologiska drivkraften i båda verken. Läsaren vet från början att det är två verk i genren postapokalyptisk skräck, därför läses verken med vetskapen om att vad som helst kan hända, när som helst. / The purpose of this project is to find out what makes the story unfold after the end of the world has taken place in Stephen King’s The Stand and Douglas Coupland’s Girlfriend In a Coma. The project has a cultural critical standpoint. After the apocalypse; what do the characters bring into the new world? The investigation is performed by using close reading. Elements essential to the narratological force are then lifted and presented. The result shows that the authors to the two works have used different techniques. The Stand uses opposites according to A.J. Greima’s actant model, whereas the narratological driving force in Girlfriend In a Coma is the use of shifting focalization. Both works have the same beneficial narratological driving force as back bone: the apocalypse. The reader knows what to expect from this genre, the post-apocalyptic horror genre. These works are read bearing in mind that anything can happen, at any time.

Naratologijos sąvoka siejama su G. Genette’o vardu. Jo teorijos leidžia kitaip pažvelgti į teksto analizę. Svarbiausia yra ne kas papasakota, bet kaip papasakota. Naratologijos teorija padeda atskleisti pasakojimo ypatybes, naratoriaus santykį su tekstu. Todėl ir yra svarbiausia, kaip pasakojama. / The concept of narratology is related to the name of G. Genette. His theories allow regarding the text analysis differently. The most important is not what is narrated, but how it is narrated. The theory of narratology helps to reveal the peculiarities of narration and narrators relation to the text. Therefore, how it is narrated is most important.