Narrative Comprehension and Film

Narrative is one of the ways we organize and understand the world. It is found everywhere: not only in films and books, but also in everyday conversations and in the non-fictional discourses of journalists, historians, educators, psychologists, attorneys and many others. Edward Branigan presents a telling exploration of the basic concepts of narrative theory and its relation to film - and literary - analysis, bringing together theories from linguistics and cognitive science, and applying them to the screen. Individual analyses of classical narratives form the basis of a complex study of every aspect of filmic fiction exploring, for example, subjectivity in "Lady in the Lake", multiplicity in "Letter from an Unknown Woman", post-modernism and documentary in "Sans Soleil". Through his exploration of film, Branigan expresses how narratology should be viewed as a distinctive strategy for recognizing, isolating and articulating the fundamental role which narrative plays in our response to the world as a whole. This book should be of interest to advanced students of film studies and literary studies.