By Dan Irving

Much has been made of recent efforts to shift STEM to STEAM, or the inclusion of the arts in an effort to integrate “wonder, critique, inquiry, and innovation” into the typical STEM curriculum. Steven Pearlstein’s article on “the parents who won’t let their children study literature,” published in the Washington Post last September, is one of the more visible recent incarnations the debate. Pearlstein, a Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University, notes that parents aren’t letting their kids major in the humanities because it’s not practical; he counters that logic by claiming that literature courses help students learn about “the meaning of life,” a metaphysical goal amongst STEM’s profound physicality. I’m wary of the argument that an Introduction to Fiction class can, or even should, teach students the meaning of life (though this might be a minority opinion). I do, however, think we — English instructors at a science-focused research university — are in a unique opportunity, early on in (what will hopefully become) our teaching careers to rethink our approach to teaching literature to make these classes more relevant to STEM students.

I argue that by building undergraduate English courses from the ground-up to focus on narratology (the “form and functioning” of narrative, per Gerald Prince), we can more effectively find common ground with undergraduate STEM students. This idea of finding common ground is worth keeping in mind: it’s not a stretch to say that 90% of students in 100-level courses — which are largely taught by PhD students — aren’t English majors, and while they may be interested in the course topic, most are there because they need the SBC credit. The idea of studying fiction, or Shakespeare, or whatever else an English course might throw at them is a foreign, and in some ways an irrelevant, concept; it’s a hoop to jump through to finish a chemistry degree. We can look at this as a drawback — we’re not necessarily teaching students who are as interested in modernism as we are — or an interesting opportunity, a chance for us to shape our teaching philosophies, in a way, to make even a health science major really get into what we’re offering.

I’ve found that providing students (inside and outside the humanities) with the narratological “tools” to “take apart” texts and “see how they work” has yielded largely positive results, remedying the sometimes-maligned notion that literature courses are only about what texts mean by focusing on how texts mean. I’ve taken this approach to some extent since I started teaching but this semester is the first time I’ve constructed a course from the ground-up to focus on narratology. Here’s the course description on my syllabus for English 194:

This course serves as an introduction to the study of film. While there are many different ways of approaching this, each appealing and valuable in their own right, in this course we will focus on analyzing the narrative elements of various films. While there is some crossover in how stories are told textually (novels, short stories) and visually (films, television), there are notable differences: to paraphrase Seymour Chatman, one of the first scholars to seriously analyze the mechanics of storytelling in film, there are some things novels can do that films can’t do, and some things that films can do that novels can’t do. Our primary goal this semester is to get a better idea of the narrative and storytelling techniques used in a range of films, from important and canonical (Psycho, The Usual Suspects) to lighthearted and fun (Josie and the Pussycats, 500 Days of Summer).

The semester will be broken into sections of three class meetings; each section will cover a single narrative element. In the first meeting, we will discuss a chapter from Peter Verstraten’s Film Narratology. The second meeting will be a film screening, which you should watch (and take notes on) with the chapter in mind. Between the second and third meetings, you will write a short response in which you demonstrate an understanding of the concept and how it relates to the film. The third meeting will be a discussion of the responses, the narrative/filmmaking element, and the film itself. These responses will serve as short exercises in order to prepare you for the final essay, in which you’ll analyze each narrative element in relation to a single film.

In my experience, using narratology as a basis for teaching helps greatly in terms of meeting students where they are. An overarching point that I try to stress is that movies like Josie and the Pussycats and Last Action Hero are just as worthwhile targets of inquiry as Psycho and The Big Sleep, and sometimes popular-entertainment films are doing more interesting things in terms of storytelling than serious, important ones. While we focus on one full-length film as a case study for each chapter (films that aren’t covered in the course text), we also watch at least one short film to get an idea of how these narrative principles are used (and subverted) in a range of films.

The text I’m using for this class, Peter Verstraten’s Film Narratology, is a pretty accessible, while still thorough, introduction to the narrative elements of film. There are some too-dense parts, which I generally tell students in advance to not worry about, but the main points of each chapter tend to be pretty clear. The chapter breakdown is perfect for setting up a syllabus, too, and I’ve broken the semester into chunks of three classes — one to discuss the chapter (with shorter examples), a second to screen a film that we watch with the chapter in mind, and a third to discuss the film in relation to the narratological concept we’re dealing with in that section. The chapters are all distinct yet build on each other in useful ways: “The Narrative Impact of the Mise en Scène,” “The Narrative Impact of Cinematography,” “Story and Fabula Disconnected through Editing,” “The Visual Narrator and Visual Focalization,” “Tension between the Visual and Auditive Narrators,” “Sound as a Narrative Force,” “The Narrative Principles of Genres,” and “Filmic Excess: When Style Drowns the Plot.” The appendix of Verstraten’s text is a short narratological analysis of The Virgin Suicides, wherein he shows how the previous chapters can come together in a single, coherent discussion of a film’s narrative techniques. The text is rigorous enough that it’s a worthwhile academic look at film but straightforward enough that my students have been able to not only follow along with this new way of studying texts (filmic or literary) but also finding it relevant to things they’re watching outside of class: we’ve talked about how how the choice of actors in particular films and shows impacts the narrative, which most hadn’t really thought about before; we’ve gone into some depth on how certain types of films demand more involvement on the part of the viewer, while others require less involvement.

Coogan and Braydon are seen here battling for superiority in a conversation with a production assistant on the film. This is one of several shots we identified in which the positioning of the characters contributed to an underlying narrative about status, a running concern in both The Life and Opinions of Tristram shandy, Gentleman and Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story.

Our first major case study of the semester was the narrative impact of the mise en scène in Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (Michael Winterbottom, 2005), a meta-film about the production of a film adaptation of Laurence Sterne’s great novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. We spent the first meeting of this section working through, first, what is meant by “mise en scène” and, second, some particularly noteworthy examples of how it might impact a film’s narrative. Mise en scène is what and who is in a single shot: the choice of actors, acting styles, positioning of characters, costumes and props, location and setting, lighting, and color (of costumes and/or sets). The intuitive appeal of narratology became clear to the students in the class once we connected this notoriously slippery filmmaking term to the manner in which they can impact the narrative itself. The friendly rivalry in the film between co-stars (and real-life friends) Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon spun out one group of students discussing how the positioning of characters in particular shots advanced an underlying narrative about status. Coogan, playing Tristram, is unaware that his character, despite being the title character, has less screen-time than Brydon’s Uncle Toby. Students pulled out several scenes throughout the film where the positioning of Coogan and Brydon advances the narrative in a way that is distinct from the manner in which narrative progression works in literary texts.

Four minutes into the film, we get our first point-of-view shot from a hidden camera in Truman’s car. We discussed how the many different sorts of lenses (an element of depth and focus) were meaningful choices that helped shape, especially early on in the film, how viewers were meant to understand the narrative of The Truman Show.

Moving from who or what is makes up a single shot into how the shot is filmed, our most recent meetings have focused on the narrative impact of cinematography, using The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998) as a case study. In the film, Jim Carrey plays a man that, since his birth, has been the topic of a television show; his entire life has been a production — his wife, best friend, and coworkers are all actors, often working in advertising opportunities into the 24/7 program, “The Truman Show.” While cinematography encompasses a range of techniques related to how film is shot — color, film stock, framing, depth and focus, superimposition, background projection, and camera operations — our main focus was on the unique ways in which film lenses (an element of depth and focus) play a role in the narrative of the film. Truman — throughout most of the film — is unaware that he’s the star of a long-running show, and thus has no idea that he’s being filmed. As viewers of the film are made aware of the production at the opening of the film, the cameras positioned in the dashboard of Truman’s car, in his bathroom mirror, and in his neighbor’s garbage can (among many others) are seen as meaningful choices the director made in order to make at particular points in the film. I’ve tried to frame this introductory look at the narratology of film as essentially putting words to storytelling techniques that we’ve always noticed, but haven’t quite had the language to appreciate it.

It’s only a few weeks into the semester, of course, but thus far I’m really happy with how the new course structure is working out. Again, most of my teaching has been narrative-focused, but this is the first time I’ve fully structured a course to deal with narratology throughout. A narratological focus doesn’t take away any focus on the historical aspects or importance of films, but I think presenting films (or texts) and saying, “alright, this is a thing that we all know, we get that it’s entertaining, and we’re going to figure out how it works” is, maybe, an easier way to get students engaged than saying, “alright, here’s this novel, we’re going to read it and talk about why it’s important.”In place of sharing particular teaching materials here, I’ll instead give some suggestions for further reading on teaching narrative theory. Merja Polvinen published an article on teaching cognitive narratology a couple years back that’s well worth a read (“Engaged Reading as Mental Work: Reflections on Teaching Cognitive Narratology”). Elsewhere, there’s an edited collection on Teaching Narrative Theory that the MLA published in 2010; it’s an alright overview that provides some ideas that might be of use, even in an adapted form. I’ve had students read Robyn Warhol’s sections on feminist narratology from Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates, with groups giving presentations on a feminist approach to particular elements of Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be? I’ve also made use of Gerald Prince’s A Dictionary of Narratology more than a few times in Introduction to Fiction courses.

References

• Herman, David, Brian McHale, and James Phelan (eds.). Teaching Narrative Theory. New York: Modern Language Association, 2010.
• Herman, David, James Phelan, Peter J. Rabinowitz, Brian Richardson, and Robyn Warhol. Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012.
• Meister, Jan Christoph. “Narratology.” In: Hühn, Peter et al. (eds.): The Living Handbook of Narratology. Hamburg: Hamburg University.
• Pearlstein, Steven. “Meet the parents who won’t let their children study literature.” Washington Post, 2 September 2009.
• Polvinen, Merja. “Engaged Reading as Mental Work: Reflections on Teaching Cognitive Narratology.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies 16:1. 145-159.
• Prince, Gerald. A Dictionary of Narratology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003.
• Verstraten, Peter. Film Narratology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.