ELIT617 NARRATOLOGIES: CLASSICAL AND POSTCLASSICAL APPROACHES

Course Objectives

At the end of this course, the student will learn:

• theoretical distinctions between classical and postclassical approaches to narrative.
• key terms, concepts and distinctions used in narrative analysis.

Course Content

Focusing on major classical and postclassical theories of narrative, this course aims to provide students with a through account of both formalist/descriptivist and interpretative/evaluative paradigms in studies of narrative.Students will explore major issues in recent scholarship on narrative such as narrativity, (trans)mediality, worldmaking, binocularity and digital textuality in connection with some earlier classical narratological questions regarding narrative constituency, storys autonomy and transferability, narrative grammar, deep/surface narrative structure and so on. This course not only focuses on theories of verbal narratives but also of visual/verbal, visual, filmic and multimodal/multimedia/digital narratives.Students will be encouraraged to explore critically the relationship between tools of narrative analysis and narrative media and seek answers to questions such as how narrativity as well as narrative analysis might be changing as the media of telling stories change. This course also aims to help students design a research paper analyzing (a) narrative text(s) in any medium or media in the light of narrative theories studied in class.

Course Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the course, students are expected to be able to:

develop an understanding of the trajectory of studies in narrative theory.

identify contemporary revisions of and additions to classical concepts and tools of narratology.

examine the relationship between theories and tools of narrative analysis and narrative media.

critically analyze narrative texts in different media using narratological tools.