Narrative Comprehension and Film

Narrative Comprehension and Film

by Edward Branigan
Released June 2013
Publisher(s): Routledge
ISBN: 9781136129322

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Book description

Narrative is one of the ways we organise and understnad the world. It is found everywhere: not only in films and books, but also in everday conversations and in the nonfictional discourses of journalists, historians, educators, psychologists, attorneys and many others.
Edward Branigan presents a telling exploration of the basic concepts of narrative theory and its relation to film - and literary - analysis, bringing together theories from linguistics and cognitive science, and applying them to the screen. Individual analyses of classical narratives form the basis of a complex study of every aspect of filmic fiction exploring, for example, subjectivity in Lady in the Lake, multiplicity in Letter from and Unknown Woman, post-modernism and documentary in Sans Soleil.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Haltitle
  3. Title
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. Contents
  7. List of figures
  8. Preface
  9. 1 Narrative Schema
    1. Psychological use value
    2. Logical transformations in narrative
    3. Pragmatic forms in narrative
    4. Cognitive schemas and other ways of associating data
    5. A proposal for a narrative schema
    6. The Girl and Her Trust
    7. Causality and schema
  10. 2 Story World and Screen
    1. A preliminary delineation of narrative in film
    2. Top-down perception
    3. Temporal and spatial order
    4. Causality and metaphor
    5. Impossible story space
    6. Screen space and stylistic metaphors
  11. 3 Narration
    1. Knowing how
    2. Disparities of knowledge
    3. Hierarchies of knowledge
    4. Nick Fury as an example
    5. Forgetting and revising
  12. 4 Levels of Narration
    1. Eight levels
    2. An implied author and a chameleon text
    3. Focalization
    4. Communication
    5. Text under a description
    6. A comprehensive description of narrative
    7. Five types of narrative theory
  13. 5 Subjectivity
    1. Levels in Hangover Square
    2. Separation of material and structure
    3. What makes film subjective? A case study of Lady in the Lake
    4. A synthesis: telling/showing/summary/scene
    5. Subjectivity in narrative theories
    6. How many cameras are in a film?
  14. 6 Objectivity and Uncertainty
    1. From subjectivity to intersubjectivity
    2. The historical present of invisible observation
    3. Simultaneous time schemes
    4. Flashback
    5. Multiplicity in Letter from an Unknown Woman
  15. 7 Fiction
    1. Fiction as partially determined reference
    2. Psychologically real theories of fiction
    3. Fictional pictures Nonfictional pictures
    4. Post-modernism and documentary in Sans Soleil
    5. A brief conclusion
  16. Notes
  17. Works cited
  18. Index

Product information

  • Title: Narrative Comprehension and Film
  • Author(s): Edward Branigan
  • Release date: June 2013
  • Publisher(s): Routledge
  • ISBN: 9781136129322