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Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00732
- Thesis Title
- Visualizing the Temporal Space of Narratives
- Author
- Sean Yeager
- E-mail
- syeager AT pnca.edu
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- Critical Studies
- Year
- 2019
- Number of Pages
- 139
- University
- Pacific Northwest College of Art
- Thesis Supervisor
- Shawna Lipton
- Supervisor e-mail
- slipton AT pnca.edu
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Taylor Eggan, Brian McHale
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English
- Department / Discipline
- Narratology, Digital Humanities, Disability Studies
- Copyright Ownership
- Languages Familiar to Author
- English
- URL where full thesis can be found
- Keywords
- narrative, narratology, temporality, digital humanities, natural language processing, disability studies, autism, neuroqueer
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- This paper studies the graphs which are created when a narrative's fabula (the timeline of events within its story) is plotted along the vertical axis of a coordinate plane and its syuzhet (the order in which these events are presented to readers) is plotted along the horizontal axis. Such graphs were recently dubbed "time maps" by William Nelles and Linda Williams, and though time maps offer a new means for the study of narrative, they have received minimal scholarly attention. To remedy this, I will survey the relevant theoretical landscape, outline a methodology for generating time maps, and theorize on the myriad forms they may take. Time maps are particularly relevant for temporal narratologists, serving as a visualization of the framework developed by Gérard Genette in Narrative Discourse. But instead of simply tracking the order of a scene's position in the fabula, as Genette and others have done, I incorporate numerical values from the text to create time maps of unrivaled accuracy, highlighting the unique isomorphism linking each text to its graph. According to Douglas Hofstadter, isomorphisms are sites for the creation of meaning, and I will go on to demonstrate how time maps can enhance traditional close reading practices. In addition to the aforementioned formal analysis, I introduce the concept of "temporal space" as the abstract and multivariate relationship between a narrative's fabula and its syuzhet, situating my mathematical methods alongside more experiential approaches to understanding time. This endeavor draws from neuroqueer studies to establish my work as the first explicitly autistic narratology and as a radically postdisciplinary deciphering practice, in the spirit of Sylvia Wynter.