I did write something some years back about the issue of timescales in meaning-making, and I was looking for kinds of meaning-making social practices that extend over VERY LONG timescales. One of those is the re-reading of favorite works, and the re-viewing of films and TV episodes, over periods of years, even decades and a whole lifetime. Identity maintenance through extended identifications and re- identifications with characters and fictional worlds is one part of this. Another of course is deepening and changing of meanings-made as we re-visit, now with the experience of new intertexts, new age-grade concerns, etc. And as usual, the functions from earlier times of our lives continue, while others are added on.
Another dimension may be that of remembering our previous encounters with a work while we are re-visiting it. How I felt about it before, what it meant to me before, and how that is both renewed and now changed in the current encounter.
I should re-visit my own writing on this topic and see what I am not remembering!
As to the wider social functions of narrative fictions, a very important one is building up convincing evaluations, and with them, principles for making evaluations. This is the "moral" dimension of literature that has pre-occupied literary critics for a very long time, but it is also an important sociological and ideological dimension. Bakhtin's analysis here emphasizes that some literary narratives embody multiple and alternative systems of parsing and evaluating the social world (heteroglossia), and combined with later work on narrator viewpoints, there is a quite complex world of possible evaluations offered in some works. Compared to those, people also appreciate morally unambiguous fictional worlds, where we can feel some sense of relief from the moral dilemmas of real life. Not to mention the pleasures of seeing the "good guys" win, at least in fiction.
JAY. Jay Lemke Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010) Educational Studies University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 www.umich.edu/~jaylemke Visiting Scholar Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication University of California -- San Diego La Jolla, CA USA 92093 On Dec 21, 2009, at 9:38 AM, Ageliki Nicolopoulou wrote:
The one person that I know who has written about repetitions of listening, but also telling, the "same" story is Peggy Miller and her students "Versions of storytelling/versions of experience: Genre for tools for creating alternative realities" in an edited volume by Rosengren, Johnson, & Harris (2000) "Imagining the impossible." Their emphasis in this piece is the type of increasing (and deepening) understanding that this child who for sometime was repeating the story of Peter Rabbit was gaining and especially his increasing identification with Peter Rabbit.While I don't dispute the phenomenon that Peggy Miller et al. capture here, I also think that storytelling (or story listening) repetitions may have multiple functions/meanings. For example, in children's spontaneous stories that I have gathered in preschool classrooms using Paley's storytelling/story-acting activity, children's repetitions of the same storyline (something that some children love to do!) at times seems to have to do with what I call, narrative concerns (getting the story right: that is, a coherent or logical story as the child perceives it), but other repetitions may indicate more clearly socio-relational concerns (getting the same effect from other children and maybe adults) and so on.I also think that repetitions of the sort Mike is talking about-- children asking for the same story to be read over and over again as well as teens or adults reading the same book over and over again-- may serve different functions. I believe the young children love such repetitions because it mainly allows them to control the world around them. They can predict what comes next and for a limited amount of time, they have full control of their (often chaotic and unpredictable) world. That's why they are very upset if one changes even one word in these repetitions. However, adolescents (and maybe adults) may like such repetitions because of the experiences and feelings that the fictional world creates (and they can bask in it) and also through repetitions they learn to discover new things...Maybe adolescents love such repetitions because it helps them see the identity they want/like to create. At least these are my conjectures about these phenomena.In short, I think these are very interesting phenomena that have occupied my attention for awhile now, but they need to be captured well and in a natural sort of way... Any thoughts of how to capture these phenomena would be appreciated.Ageliki -- ********************************************** Ageliki Nicolopoulou Professor, Department of Psychology Lehigh University 17 Memorial Drive East Bethlehem, PA 18015-3068 Personal Webpage: http://www.lehigh.edu/~agn3/index.htm Departmental Webpage: http://www.lehigh.edu/~inpsy/nicolopoulou.html ********************************************* mike cole wrote:Yes it applies to little kids!I LOVE the Stevenson quote in response to H. James (who seems to have gotten wrapped up in an odd place in the quote).Sheila and i were discussing last night the phenomenon of little kids like to hear the same story read over and over and over and over again and young teens reading, for example, Lord of the Rings several times.And adults going to Operas or listening to music they particularly love repeatedly.There is an age-related component to these phenomena -- parents go nuts on the 300th reading of /Where the Wild Things Are/ or /Goodnight Moon/, little kids cannot stand, as a rule, listening to the Goldberg variations, etc.Has anyone written about this phenomeon and what means?Thanks for the /Educated Mind/ tip, David C. Sound relevant to ongoing discussion re goals of education that might guide reformefforts. mikeOn Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 8:08 AM, Ageliki Nicolopoulou <agn3@lehigh.edu <mailto:agn3@lehigh.edu>> wrote:Thanks, Mike, for this very useful article. This relates a lot to what I have been trying to do these past few years and it pulls the adult literature well together. My work has centered more on preschoolers spontaneous (fantasy) stories and I have tried to find ways to analyze them, which goes beyond just using structural criteria but also incorporates content in a serious way (that is, it incorporates content and structure). I have also argued (as do Mar & Oatley, but for adults) for the significant of character in children's narratives (whether for learning to comprehend or tell stories) and I'm continuing to think about these issues. More recently, I have devoted my attention/effort in creating an intervention programs using commercially available children's books to promote narrative comprehension as well as social understanding, especially for low-income children. As I'm in the midst of writing about these issues, this article is very useful. Thanks again, Ageliki -- ********************************************** Ageliki Nicolopoulou Professor, Department of Psychology Lehigh University 17 Memorial Drive East Bethlehem, PA 18015-3068 Personal Webpage: http://www.lehigh.edu/~agn3/index.htm <http://www.lehigh.edu/%7Eagn3/index.htm> Departmental Webpage: http://www.lehigh.edu/~inpsy/nicolopoulou.html <http://www.lehigh.edu/%7Einpsy/nicolopoulou.html> ********************************************** mike cole wrote: Of course, i *would *forget to attach the article. Here it is. mike On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 4:56 PM, mike cole<lchcmike@gmail.com <mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com>> wrote: Sorting through all the unread journals and seeking to bring order to the helterskelter of my intellectual meanderings, i came across this article that I think should hold some interest for xmca-o-philes. As some of you know, I have an abiding interest in the idea of tertiary artifacts, works of art, for Wartofsky (so I learned from Yrjo), play, "alternative worlds" like the 5th Dimension that Peg Griffin invented and I have played in for a long time. But I also teach and think (think and teach?) about various communication media including novels and sitcoms. This article caught my attention in that odd nexus of interests: fiction as "simulations," or, we might say, tertiary artifacts, or we might say, "tools to think with." Delete or read along, as the mood catches you. mike _______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca-- ********************************************** Ageliki Nicolopoulou Professor Department of Psychology, Lehigh University 17 Memorial Drive East Bethlehem, PA 18015-3068 Personal Webpage: http://www.lehigh.edu/~agn3/index.htm Departmental Webpage: http://www.lehigh.edu/~inpsy/nicolopoulou.html ********************************************** <agn3.vcf>_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
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