Social Minds in Drama. Golnaz Shams
studies engage in transgeneric approaches – where more often than not narrative theories are used in genres other than the traditionally accepted novel – and intermedial approaches where narratological concepts are used in media that are not (text-based) literary narratives. One of these important and interesting cross-disciplinary formations has resulted in the advent of cognitive narrative studies, which is the major theoretical framework of this book.
Postclassical narrative theories in general and cognitive narrative theory in particular have much to offer when the narrative text to be analysed is a playscript. This is not only due to the fact that they embrace drama as narrative but also to the emphasis they ascribe to the role of the mind and consciousness. Whereas in classical narrative studies the most important feature of a narrative is the plot,21 with the advent of postclassical theories other features of the narrative become equally important. In the case of cognitive narrative theory, the mind and concepts relating to the mind become the defining features of narratives. There are different aspects of the mind in relation to the narrative that become central to cognitive narrative theories: a) narrative as a way of thinking, its importance in life and to the mind; b) the interplay between the mind of the reader and the narrative; c) (the interaction of) the minds of the characters (Ryan 2010: 476). While the different concepts relating to the mind may pertain to the influence the text has on the mind in general or the interplay of the mind and cognition of the reader and text or a preoccupation with the minds of the inhabitants of a storyworld, it is easy to see how characters might easily become important features of the narrative. Since drama is seen as a genre often based on the characters’ speech and action, the benefits a cognitive narrative approach could bring to the analysis of playscripts come as no surprise.
Thus, cognitive narrative theory embraces the relationship of mind (in its diverse connotations) with various dimensions, and different uses various interpretation of stories may offer. This outlook alone invites a plethora of so many ←36 | 37→diverse approaches within the umbrella term cognitive studies. Since these studies focus on how narratives describe mental states in the cultural and social setting, it comes as little surprise that one of the approaches to take on cognitive studies fairly early on was psychology. Cognitive psychologists started working on story grammar and cognitive systems based on studies of structured, script-like mental processes, memories and perception.22 In the field of AI, many theorists have started to gain interest in a cognitive approach as well. The idea of how complex plots and stories were broken down into scripts and frames in order to arrive at an interpretation seems like a very intriguing concept.23 Other fields joined the cognitive train and eventually one could read up on impossible, norm-challenging scenarios focusing on atypical presentations of narrative, known as unnatural narratology,24 and approaches that focus on the spatiotemporal aspect of narrative as the most important concept of narrative.25
Other works that have been done in the field of cognitive studies include the concept of focalisation and perspective in narratives26 and storyworlds, a cognitive reception theory based on the elements of suspense and surprise in a narrative.27 There are empirical studies that are interested in fMRIs (functional MRI) and in how long it actually takes to read a narrative.28 Relevant to my work are all the theorists who started developing approaches dealing with researching the concept of characters in storyworlds; that is, different methods of characterisation. More specific ramifications of this interest would entail studies in techniques used by narrators, by storytellers or by other figures inhabiting storyworlds. One of the major concerns started to become the mental life of these characters and coming up with methods and techniques to understand these mental lives, individual stories and social groupings of characters in stories.29 Most of these characterisation techniques work hand in hand with other cognitive fields such as transmedial narratology in order to facilitate a better understanding of a cognitive interpretation of any story-like structure and its components across semiotic media.30 Folk psychology, studies of emotion in ←37 | 38→a narrative context and studies exploring how narratives about counterfactual scenarios support interpretation also often contribute to a better understanding of different cognitive approaches.
Along these lines, recent developments have underlined and expanded notions and concepts of consciousness and cognition in cognitive narrative theory. Monika Fludernik’s experientiality is one of these new concepts that shows the important role the mind plays in a narrative.31 To Fludernik the core property of a narrative is an experiencing consciousness. The relation between human experience and the semiotic representation of characters’ experience will guarantee the narrativity of a narrative. This representation is channelled through cognitive faculties: the understanding, perception, and the evaluation of emotions. Thus, the very common ideas in many narrative approaches, such as the notions of narrator and plot, become secondary: if the deep structure of narrativity is experientiality, then traditional restrictions of classical narratology do not apply. As long as there is an anthropomorphic experiencing mind engaged in the happenings of a storyworld then we are dealing with a narrative. It is this experientiality that makes a narrative interpretable. Such a stance towards mind and narrative would incorporate the second type of the above-mentioned (page 6) relations between mind and narrative (b): interaction between the minds of the readers and the narrative. This type of narrativity is not something that is already within the text to be decoded, but something that readers bring to the text with their reading and interpretation. In Fludernik’s case, the focus of the mind is the interplay between the characters in the storyworld and the readers, which is very close to Herman’s (2009) contribution to cognitive studies with his ideas on qualia.
Herman too believes that the consciousness factor is one of the basic elements of narrative.32 Simply put, it is the “what-it’s-like for someone or something to have a particular experience” (2009: 144) that makes a narrative a narrative. Herman mainly situates this felt, subjective property of consciousness within the storyworld, and states that it includes sensations, perceptions and thoughts. He elaborates on this what-it’s-like dimension when the consciousness of readers and the storyworld interact, but he also often focuses on instances when minds within the storyworld are affected by qualia. According to Herman, the mind is
←38 | 39→
spread out as a distributed flow in what the characters do and say (as well as what they do not do and do not say), in the material environment that constitutes part of their interaction, in the method of narration used to present their verbal and nonverbal activities, in the readers’ own engagement with all of these representational structures. (2009:153)
As Ryan had mentioned before, the concept of mind and cognition in relation to narratives in cognitive narrative theory might relate to the interaction between the consciousness of the readers and the text (b) and the consciousness of the inhabitants of a storyworld (c). It is not always easy to tell the two apart since the act of interpretation hinges on both aspects. However, theorists have their preferences, and whereas Fludernik and Herman emphasise the interaction of the minds of readers and characters (Herman’s examples privilege characters a bit more), theorists like Alan Palmer base their approach on the storyworld