Cover not available
Article published In:
English Text Construction
Vol. 11:2 (2018) ► pp.169–199

The rhythms of narrative tension and its cultural satisfaction

Frank Miller’s 300

| Universidad de Alcalá

Critics reading narratives as progressions, that’s to say, from beginning to end, prefer to see meaning emerge as a result of the interaction between different elements in the narrative, rather than of the imposition of a priori cultural schemata. This article, however, argues for the possibility of using a priori cultural schemata, as long as these pass through the filters established by theories of narrative progression. To show how this is done, I will interpret Frank Miller’s comic 300 by letting a tool of cultural-semantic analysis interact with narrative tension in the form of suspense, curiosity, and surprise. I argue that the back and forth between narrative tension and the tool accounts not only for the content of the comic but also for its basic narrative rhythm.

Keywords: 300 , cultural-semantic tool, Frank Miller, modality, narrative progression, narrative rhythm, narrative tension
Article outline
  • 1.Theoretical preliminaries
  • 2.Bridging the gap between semantics and cultural schemata
    • 2.1A tool which originates in modal logic
    • 2.2From semantics towards culture
  • 3.Analyzing 300
    • 3.1Prolegomena
    • 3.2Curiosity 1 to 3
    • 3.3Suspense 1 to 5
    • 3.4Surprise
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 October 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.00008.can
References
Bal, Mieke
2009 Narratology: Introduction into the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Baron-Cohen, Simon
2011 The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty. New York: Basic.Google Scholar
Baroni, Raphaël
2007 La tension narrative: suspense, curiosité et surprise. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
2011 Tensions et résolutions: musicalité de l’intrigue ou intrigue musicale? Cahiers de Narratologie 211: 1–13.Google Scholar
Brooks, Peter
1984 Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Candel, Daniel
2013a Advanced literacy and the place of literary semantics in secondary education: A tool of fictional analysis. Semiotica 1951 (June): 305–330.Google Scholar
2013b Moving possible world theory from logic to value. Poetics Today 34 (1–2): 177–231.Google Scholar
2013c Literatur interpetieren – ein Analysetool. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
2016 Possible worlds in the history of the novel. Poetics Today 37 (1): 107–136. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Candel, Daniel et al.
2017 Analyzing the fictional worlds of Pixar with an eye on digital humanities. Semiotica 2181 (September): 91–118. DOI logo DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Candel, Daniel
2018 A report on the reports of the Stanford Literary Lab: A reason why the digital humanities may find it difficult to change literary history. Semiotica, 2241 (September): 1–24.Google Scholar
Dannenberg, Hilary
2008 Coincidence and Counterfactuality: Plotting Time and Space in Narrative Fiction. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Doležel, Lubomír
1998 Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Fischer, Andreas
2004 The notional structure of thesauruses. In Categorization in the History of English, Christian J. Kay and Jeremy J. Smith (eds). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 41–58. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herman, David
2012 Story-Telling and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge: MIT.Google Scholar
Herodotus
1998 Histories. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hühn, Peter
2016 The eventfulness of non-events. In Narrative Sequence in Contemporary Narratology, Raphaël Baroni & Françoise Revaz (eds). Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 37–47.Google Scholar
Kay, Christian
2009 Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary: with Additional Material from “A Thesaurus of Old English”. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Konyndyk, Kenneth
1986 Introductory Modal Logic. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William
1972 Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, Alasdair
2007 After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
2016 Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity: An Essay on Desire, Practical Reasoning, and Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McCloud, Scott
1994 Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
McKeon, Michael
2002 The Origins of the English Novel: 1600–1740. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
2005 The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Midgley, Mary
1994 The Ethical Primate: Humans, Freedom and Morality. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miller, Frank
1999 300. Milwaukee: Dark Horse.Google Scholar
Moretti, Franco
2013 Distant Reading. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Phelan, Jim
1989 Reading People, Reading Plots: Character, Progression, and the Interpretation of Narrative. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
2007 Experiencing Fiction: Judgments, Progressions, and the Rhetorical Theory of Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.Google Scholar
Pramaggiore, Maria & Tom Wallis
2011 Film: A Critical Introduction. London: Laurence King.Google Scholar
Reichl, Susanne
2009 Cognitive Principles, Critical Practice: Reading Literature at University. Vienna: Vienna University Press.Google Scholar
Rescher, Nicholas
1968 Topics in Philosophical Logic. Dordrecht: Reidel. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Adam
1999 Romantic and Victorian Long Poems: A Guide. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Ronen, Ruth
1994 Possible Worlds in Literary Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 Des mondes possibles au-delà du principe de vérité. In La théorie littéraire des mondes possibles, Françoise Lavocat (ed.). Paris: CNRS Éditions, 189–202.Google Scholar
Ryan, Marie-Laure
1991 Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
2001 Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Seaton, Douglas
2005 Narrative in music: The case of Beethoven’s “Tempest” sonata. In Narratology Beyond Literary Criticism: Mediality, Disciplinarity, Jan Christoph Meister (ed.). Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 65–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Segal, Eyal
2016 Ending twice over (or more): Alternate endings in narrative. In Narrative Sequence in Contemporary Narratology, Raphaël Baroni & Françoise Revaz (eds). Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 71–86.Google Scholar
Shen, Dan
2013 Implied author: Authorial audience and context, form and history in neo-Aristotelian rhetorical theory. Narrative 21 (2): 140–158. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 Style and Rhetoric of Short Narrative Fiction: Covert Progressions Behind Overt Plots. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
2015 Dual textual dynamics and dual readerly dynamics: Double narrative movements in Mansfield’s “Psychology”. Style 49 (4): 411–438. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spiro, Rand J.
1980 Constructive processes in prose comprehension and recall. In Theoretical Issues in Reading Comprehension, Rand J. Spiro et al. (eds). Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 245–278.Google Scholar
Sternberg, Meir
1978 Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
1990 Telling in time (I): Chronology and narrative theory. Poetics Today 11 (4): 901–948. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1992 Telling in time (II): Chronology, teleology, narrativity. Poetics Today 13 (3): 463–541. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2001 How narrativity makes a difference. Narrative 9 (2): 115–122.Google Scholar
2010 Narrativity: From objectivist to functional paradigm. Poetics Today 31 (3): 507–659. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Swift, Graham
1983 Waterland. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Swirsky, Peter
2010 Literature, Analytically Speaking: Explorations in the Theory of Interpretation, Analytic Aesthetics and Evolution. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Todorov, Tzvetan
1977 The Poetics of Prose. Ithaca: Cornell.Google Scholar
Toolan, Michael
2009 Narrative Progression in the Short Story: A Corpus Stylistic Approach. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 Musical narrativity. In Narrative Sequence in Contemporary Narratology, Raphaël Baroni & Françoise Revaz (eds). Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 130–150.Google Scholar
Turner, Mark
1987 Death Is the Mother of Beauty: Mind, Metaphor, Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Vernay, Jean-François
2014 The truth about fiction as possible worlds, Journal of Language, Literature and Culture 61 (2): 133–141. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
von Wright, George H.
1951 An Essay in Modal Logic. Amsterdam: North Holland.Google Scholar
Williams, Raymond
1988 Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana.Google Scholar
Wolf, Werner
2005 Music and narrative. In Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, David Herman, Manfred Jahn & Marie-Laure Ryan (eds). New York: Routledge, 324–329.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Bermejo-Berros, Jesús, Jaime Lopez-Diez & Miguel Angel Gil Martínez
2022. Inducing narrative tension in the viewer through suspense, surprise, and curiosity. Poetics 93 ► pp. 101664 ff. DOI logo
Candel, Daniel
2020. Covert Progression in Comics. Poetics Today 41:4 ► pp. 705 ff. DOI logo
Candel, Daniel
2020. Extending the embodied semiotic square: A cultural-semantic analysis of “Follow your Arrow”. Semiotica 2020:236-237 ► pp. 275 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.