Past research on video game effects was often limited to explaining effects of game content and mode, leaving structural and contextual game elements scarcely investigated. The present research examined the yet unclear role of narration in video games, by adapting concepts and methodology from video game research based on self-determination theory as well as past research on the effects of literary fiction. Results provided evidence for the facilitation of immersion and an immersion-mediated enhancement of autonomy and relatedness need satisfaction through in-game storytelling, suggesting a mutual enhancement of immersion and need satisfaction. Moreover, in-game storytelling enhanced affective theory of mind. Perspectives on future research, connecting in-game storytelling and game content to complement current knowledge of video game effects on various real-world outcomes, are discussed.

The article analyzes the “fictional” worlds employed by literary historians with a tool grounded in possible worlds theory. The core of the tool's spatiotemporal framework is applied to four literary histories which cover the history of the novel from its beginnings to the twentieth century: Thomas Pavel's “The Novel in Search of Itself: A Historical Morphology,” Michael McKeon's Origins of the English Novel: 1600 – 1740, Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth's The English Novel in History: 1840 – 1895, and Franco Moretti's The Modern Epic: The World System from Goethe to García Márquez. The analysis confirms adherence to the tool's patterns in the four histories. Such adherence may help us understand ways academics and specifically historians think about literature and validate the spatiotemporal framework as an analytic tool. In the current “post-postmodern” context of history as both an engagement with literary forms and a search for truth, knowledge of the former advances a grasp of the latter.

This article presents a tool of literary analysis developed by the author as an alternative to existing possible world theories (PWT). The aim is to create links between the latter’s neutral, descriptive accuracy and more value-laden approaches with an eye to both research and education. Establishing such links demands careful monitoring to prevent the tool from becoming arbitrary. This is done by (1) showing the steps that lead from common versions of PWT to this tool of analysis; (2) building control mechanisms into the tool, above all by keeping in touch with the original semantic modalities of PWT and reflecting on the use of the tool (“metacognition”); and (3) systematizing reader expectations, as the tool’s orientation toward value makes it cognitive. To show how the tool fares under such conditions and how it could play a role in education, it is then applied to the children’s books Where the Wild Things Are and The Gruffalo and the comic “The Baba Yaga” (from the Hellboy series): they all undergo a process of analysis and metacognitive reflection. Validating the tool as an analytic and an educational measure depends on its ability to guide the reader toward an interpretation of these texts and to handle interpretative lacunae through metacognitive inquiry.

This article analyses the understanding of sexuality and women in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and compares it with the one offered by the Catholic encyclical Humanae Vitae. It does so against the background of the four dimensions of the real as advocated by Todorov and others. The first part of the article analyses how, and explains why, by grafting women and nature on to the religious-the first via child-birth in chapters 55-58, the second via sex in chapter 74-Brown's text runs the risk of objectifying women, de-naturalising sex, and de-individuating sexual encounters. The second part of the article highlights the similarities and differences between Brown's novel and the Catholic encyclical. Both texts are shown to work in surprisingly similar ways, as they both denature sex, make much of sacrifice and sexual continence, and defend a teleological view of sex. Ultimately, however, differences prevail, as in both texts the understanding and use of teleology on the one hand, and the value conferred to individualisation on the other, differ widely, emphasising the coherence-although a radical one-of the Humanae Vitae and the lack of coherence of The Da Vinci Code.Keywords Dan Brown AE The Da Vinci Code AE Literature and theology AE Literature and religion AE Humanae Vitae AE Catholicism AE Teleology AE Feminism The Work that went into this article was financed by the ''Vicerrectorado de Investigació n'' of the Universidad de Alcalá (''La Ecocrítica: un giro en la percepció n del medio ambiente desde las humanidades'', UAH PI 2005/065)

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