Narrative | EPFL Graph Search

A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller, novel, etc.). Narratives can be presented through a sequence of written or spoken words, through still or moving images, or through any combination of these. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare (to tell), which is derived from the adjective gnarus (knowing or skilled). Narration (i.e., the process of presenting a narrative) is a rhetorical mode of discourse, broadly defined (and paralleling argumentation, description, and exposition), is one of four rhetorical modes of discourse. More narrowly defined, it is the fiction-writing mode in which a narrator communicates directly to an audience. The school of literary criticism known as Russian formalism has applied methods that are more often used to analyse narrative fiction, to non-fictional texts such as

The empire of the narrative: Plan making through the prism of classical and postclassical narratologies

Elena Cogato Lanza, Laurent Matthey

This article theorizes the "narrative turn" in urban planning studies, using Gerard Genette's work to differentiate first- and second-degree narratives. Genette defines the latter as paratexts that determine the public's reception of the former. The article assesses how second-degree narratives work with different perceptual regimes to construct the reception of the political vision of territory. To that end, it resorts to the recent work of postclassical narratology. Indeed, the latter is particularly interested in the way in which the narrative, in various forms, affects its addressee. Postclassical narratology allows us to renew the theory of narrative in urban planning by focusing on what hypothetically happens in the consciousness of the receiver of the narrative when he or she becomes aware of it. Consequently, the paper sheds light on an emerging aspect of the design process: disambiguating signals embedded in urban planning documents intended for a wider public.

SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC2022

Character Networks and Centrality

Yannick Rochat

A character network represents relations between characters from a text; the relations are based on text proximity, shared scenes/events, quoted speech, etc. Our project sketches a theoretical framework for character network analysis, bringing together narratology, both close and distant reading approaches, and social network analysis. It is in line with recent attempts to automatise the extraction of literary social networks (Elson, 2012; Sack, 2013) and other studies stressing the importance of character- systems (Woloch, 2003; Moretti, 2011). The method we use to build the network is direct and simple. First, we extract co-occurrences from a book index, without the need for text analysis. We then describe the narrative roles of the characters, which we deduce from their respective positions in the network, i.e. the discourse. As a case study, we use the autobiographical novel Les Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We start by identifying co-occurrences of characters in the book index of our edition (Slatkine, 2012). Subsequently, we compute four types of centrality: degree, closeness, betweenness, eigenvector. We then use these measures to propose a typology of narrative roles for the characters. We show that the two parts of Les Confessions, written years apart, are structured around mirroring central figures that bear similar centrality scores. The first part revolves around the mentor of Rousseau; a figure of openness. The second part centres on a group of schemers, depicting a period of deep paranoia. We also highlight characters with intermediary roles: they provide narrative links between the societies in the life of the author. The method we detail in this complete case study of character network analysis can be applied to any work documented by an index.

University of Lausanne2014

Londres, capitale du post-modernisme?

Nicolas Bruno Jacquet

The advantage of the dynamism of the London architectural scene seems rather ignored by historians and theorists. Not only is London absent from the grand narrative of modernity, but it is also denied the status of avant-garde, although since the 1960s, the British capital has been one of the main testing grounds of the renewal of forms and architectural ideas. The emergence of the of notion âpost-modernismâ at the turn of 1970s, initiated within the London specialized publishing, confirms this central role. This theoretical notion was created by the historian Charles Jencks (whose professor was Reyner Banham, initiator of the New Brutalism with Alison and Peter Smithson) as an alternative to modernism. It has transformed the architectural scene by establishing the return of historicism, the great moral taboo of a modernity based essentially on functionalism. This theoretical revolution, however, did not occur without causing grotesque postures, fueling a debate exacerbated and soon disrupted by the controversial speech of Prince Charles, who became the spokesman of the traditionalists. The impact in the media of this âpost-modern affairâ has led to believe in the manifestation of a crisis of legitimacy and of reception for the work of architects, in the context of heated debates concerning the cancellations of three major architectural and urban planning competitions for the capital city â the extension of the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, the No.1 Poultry programme in the City, the redesigning of Paternoster Square near St Paulâs Cathedral. Yet, this intense sequence of the reappraisal of modernism has not curbed the development of an innovative and a radical architecture. On the contrary, it has led to the deregulation of the modern discourse by problematizing the architectâs responsibility in the creation of the built environment and by forcing to reconsider the challenges of integrating radicalism in a located environment. In this, âpost-modernismâ questions the foundations and the revival of a specifically British culturalist approach, as an alternative to the progressive model that has guided the idea and the act of modernity.

EPFL2016

Londres, capitale du post-modernisme?

Nicolas Bruno Jacquet

EPFL2016