{"product_id":"avatars-of-story","title":"Avatars of Story","description":"\u003cp\u003eSince its inception, narratology has developed primarily as an investigation of literary narrative fiction. Linguists, folklorists, psychologists, and sociologists have expanded the inquiry toward oral storytelling, but narratology remains primarily concerned with language-supported stories. In\u003ci\u003e Avatars of Story, \u003c\/i\u003eMarie-Laure Ryan moves beyond literary works to examine other media, especially electronic narrative forms.  By grappling with semiotic media other than language and technology other than print, she reveals how story, a form of meaning that transcends cultures and media,  achieves  diversity by presenting itself under multiple avatars.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRyan begins by considering, among other texts, a 1989 Cubs-Giants baseball broadcast, the reality television show \u003ci\u003eSurvivor,\u003c\/i\u003e and the film \u003ci\u003eThe Truman Show.\u003c\/i\u003e In all these texts, she sees a narrative that organizes meaning without benefit of hindsight, anticipating the real-time dimension of computer games. She then expands her inquiry to new media. In a discussion covering text-based interactive fiction such as \u003ci\u003eSpider and Web \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eGalatea, \u003c\/i\u003ehypertexts such as \u003ci\u003eCalifia \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003ePatchwork Girl,\u003c\/i\u003e multimedia works such as \u003ci\u003eJuvenate, \u003c\/i\u003eWeb-based short narratives, and \u003ci\u003eFaÇade,\u003c\/i\u003e a multimedia, AI-supported project in interactive drama, she focuses on how narrative meaning is affected by the authoring software, such as the Infocom parser, the Storyspace hypertext-producing system, and the programs Flash and Director. She also examines arguments that have been brought up against considering computer games such as \u003ci\u003eThe Sims \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eEverQuest \u003c\/i\u003eas a form of narrative, and responds by outlining an approach to computer games that reconciles their imaginative  and strategic dimension. In doing so, Ryan distinguishes a wide spectrum of narrative modes, such as utilitarian, illustrative, indeterminate, metaphorical, participatory, emergent, and simulative.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUltimately, Ryan stresses the difficulty of reconciling narrativity with interactivity and anticipates the time when media will provide new ways to experience stories.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMarie-Laure Ryan is an independent scholar and the author of, most recently, \u003ci\u003eNarrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Minnesota Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54222635762008,"sku":"9780816646869","price":21.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9780816646869_6a77041a-85bc-42b9-9669-fa001cac39e9.jpg?v=1778505338","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/avatars-of-story","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}