The Narratology of Comic Art

By placing comics in a lively dialogue with contemporary narrative theory, The Narratology of Comic Art builds a systematic theory of narrative comics, going beyond the typical focus on the Anglophone tradition. This involves not just the exploration of those properties in comics that can be meaningfully investigated with existing narrative theory, but an interpretive study of the potential in narratological concepts and analytical procedures that has hitherto been overlooked. This research monograph is, then, not an application of narratology in the medium and art of comics, but a revision of narratological concepts and approaches through the study of narrative comics. Thus, while narratology is brought to bear on comics, equally comics are brought to bear on narratology.Peer reviewe

Diachronic Narratology and Historical Inquiry. : Principles, Strategies and Metaphors

Peer reviewe

Terrorism, fiction and assassinating Thatcher : introduction

Peer reviewe

The ICLA Research Committee on Comics Studies and Graphic Narrative: Introduction

Peer reviewe

Virtual Assistants as Characters—Or Not

New technologies like voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa, and the Google Assistant give the impression that the lines between humans and machines are blurring as machines gradually take up social roles once occupied by humans. To counter that anxiety, this essay argues that these technologies are becoming more like characters, adapting to the templates we initially constructed for fictional beings whose space voice assistants occupy instead. It provides a textual reading of the Japanese voice assistant Hikari Azuma as advertised by the company Vinclu's website in order to demonstrate how Hikari functions as a kyara, a character without story, whose development depends on the user. The essay proposes that we have to adjust our conceptual understanding of characters as distinct from human beings and technology. Instead, the essay concludes that we should perceive current technologies like voice assistants as technologies operating on a spectrum in which some machines will look more like characters and others more like software-in-action with no human-likeness at all.Peer reviewe

Tekstianalyysin ja lukukokemuksen mahdoton yhtälö

The Impossible Equation of Text Analysis and Personal Reading Experience This article examines Peter J. Rabinowitz’s notions of “authorial audience” and “narrative audience” in terms of their relevance as pedagogical tools in the univer¬sity classroom. Rabinowitz’s rhetorical theory of hypothetical audiences, which has remained relatively unknown in Finnish literary studies, attempts to bridge the gap between the demands of detailed text analysis, knowledge of the author’s expectations, and the reader’s personal involvement in reading. The focus in the article is on the difficulty of knowing just how much of the cultural and historical background of a given text, the basic reader competencies, or the reader’s personal involvement in reading, should be brought into the classroom discussion. The emphasis on the reader’s reaction to the hypothetical roles he or she could join is pertinent in the light of recent empirical research that has found that personal involvement in narrative discourse is important for the learning of textual analysis. This research has shown that more student-centered approaches have achieved better results in teaching sophisticated text analysis and, further, have reported that the students thus remain more favorable orientated to literature (than in courses concentrating solely on textual features). At the same time, however, the focus on the reader’s personal involvement may overestimate the importance of familiar literary conventions and involve uncritical equation of the reader’s personal politics and ethics with those of the author and his or her time. The article then moves on to a brief analysis of James Joyce’s short story “An Encounter”, from Dubliners, attempting to show how (inductive) analysis of this narra¬tive may move toward broader claims about hypothetical audiences and thus potentially bridge the gap between the demands of text analysis, knowledge of literary conventions and expectations, and personal involvement in reading. The many references to actual locations in Dublin, or to historical names and events in Joyce’s story, along with the political, educational and religious views that it voices and reflects, pose the difficult question of their relevance for (what may be thought of as) an intelligent interpretation of the story. Simultaneously, “An Encounter” investigates hypothetical audiences in its own right, portraying and identifying different types of readers who are deeply involved in the fictions that they read. It is, then, suggested in this analysis that the students’ ability to connect the places and names to actual places and historical contexts may be less significant than their capacity to pretend to join the narrative audience, that is, to test out different imaginative audiences who pretend to believe the story as true. Further, it is argued that the reader’s ability to get more involved in the fictional world of “An Encounter” might help the understanding of the characters’ minds, behavior, speech and their evolving complex relations. As members of the narrative audience, readers may be able to identify particularly relevant questions about the characters and their fictional world, from imaginary perspectives and roles that the fiction offers them

Kannen iho, säestys ja käännös

Ville Hänninen, Kirjan kasvot: Sata vuotta suomalaisia kirjankansia. Kirjokansi, 178. Helsinki: SKS, 2017, 199 s