Argax Project

Parallels to Traditional Narratology

Besides applying to cutting-edge interactive narrative systems, the new poetics also shares striking similarities to the definitions found in established narrative theory. For instance, Seymour Chatman gives the following conceptual division of a narrative text:

Chatman's model of narrative (Chatman 1978, p.26) [diagram abridged].

These concepts match those of the proposed poetics, with the translation of terms shown as follows:

Chatman's model of narrative with terms translated to those of the new poetics.

This simple translation shows how interactive narratives share much of their structure with traditional narrative forms, and so they can be understood in the same terms. While this translation allows us to apply the bulk of narratology to interactive narrative, it also offers something to narratology in return--specifically, the notion of formal and material causes at work between the different levels, which are the foundations of a definition of interactor agency.

Works Cited

• Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978.

Argax Project : Dissertation : A Rough Draft Node http://www2.hawaii.edu/~ztomasze/argax

Last Edited: 08 Apr 2011 ©2007 by Z. Tomaszewski.