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Summary of course learning • Publishing genres and the process of editing a book • Types of narrator, whose point of view • Time of story and the narration • The story-tellers
– Roald Dahl and Fantastic Mr. Fox – Hayao Miyazaki and the film Spirited Away. – Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean – Kurt Vonnegut - Cat’s Cradle – Bill Watterson - and Calvin & Hobbes • Chain narratives • Western storytelling often relies on the concept of conflict - domination of one element by another. • This dualism is evident in traditional tellings of Red Riding Hood and in contemporary rewrites considered original or ground breaking.
• Further reading Carranza explains how the boundaries between good and evil in fairy stories has often become exaggerated over time. She cites examples retold by Disney, that she classifies as “lacklustre epigones” (Carranza 2012) whereby the story telling is built on, “old scaffolding of good and evil in absolute terms” (Carranza 2012). Modern interpretations risk repeating clichés and trite motifs. This approach to absolute good and bad so often places the wolf then, as absolute bad and this position is reinforced through exaggerations of features, such as claws and teeth. This is seen in Helen Oxenbury’s 2019 illustrations of Beatrix Potter’s text for Red Riding hood. • Alternatively, the wolf’s position as ‘baddie’ can be reinforced by the making of the innocence of Red, where innocence represents absolute good. A small, naive female child creates innocence. Visual clues such as scale, proportions, appearance and so on. • So, to make the wolf not bad he is often described as cute, as innocent, as small - he takes on the perceived characteristics of good. However, this can reinfocre the dualism
• Four act story-telling - Kishotenketsu • Traditional Western three act structure
– In the first act, a conflict is introduced. In the second act the conflict is escalated, and in the third it is resolved. The conflict is an integral part of the structure as a whole. That’s not the case in Kishōtenketsu. In none of the four acts is a conflict a requirement. – This holds true even for the third act. The complication doesn’t have be something that the character struggles against – but it can be. (Odlund n.d.)
Figure 22 - Irving, 2020. natalia Mendez notes.jpg
