Official Course Description
Narratology is a discipline that deals with "the logic, principles, and practices of narrative representation" (Meister 2014). Computational Narratology in turn is "the study of narrative from the point of view of computation and information processing" (Mani 2013). The kind of narrative representation this course will deal with are literary prose texts. With Narratology being a logic- and structure-oriented discipline, it is especially suitable for computational analysis, while the idiosyncrasies of prose texts provide a stimulating challenge for the researchers. As the origins of Narratology date back to the Russian formalists of the early 20th century, we can nowadays build on a rich foundation of narratological perspectives and concepts. This course will focus on computationally analyzing characters and their motivation.
We will start with a brief, cursory introduction on essential concepts from Narratology and Computational Narratology (e.g., Piper et al. 2021). Subsequently, we will discuss in detail approaches for the study of characters in literature and how we can analyze what drives characters and their actions.
[b]Course Requirements:[/b]
Regular attendance and participation are essential for keeping up with the course. The students are expected to actively moderate at least one class discussion session. The course will conclude with a written term paper. Further details will be given at the beginning of the seminar. It is particularly important that you are present at the first session in order to organize the seminar.
Online Offerings
moodle
- Lecturer: Julian Häußler