Making Events – Making Stories – Making Worlds: Ways of Worldmaking from a Narratological Point of View

Loss of words and end of worlds: Transitions and troubles of travel writing

“…The narrative form in general is seen to have an especially powerful potential regarding the making of worlds. The main reason for this is that the narrative and storytelling -that is, the procedures and processes through which happenings, occurrences or incidents become meaningful events, stories and story-worlds -not only generate possible worlds but also exert performative power (Neumann and Zierold 2010, Nünning 2010, Nyqvist 2018. As Birgit Neumann and Martin Zierold hold:…”

Taking Responsibility for the Future: Ten Proposals for Shaping the Future of the Study of Culture into a Problem-Solving Paradigm

“…Although there is broad consensus by now that narratives are of great importance for the ways in which we make sense of our experiences and the world, neither narrative theory nor the study of culture have been much concerned with the ways in which events, stories, and fictional or real worlds are made, or with the functions that various forms of cultural worldmaking can fulfil (see Nünning 2010). Narratives are at work in processes such as identity formation, the forging of communities and nations, the negotiation and dissemination of norms and values, and the fabrication of storied versions of 'the world.'…”

“…Note: For this essay I have drawn on and adapted some ideas and formulations that were first broached or developed in earlier articles (see especially Nünning 2010Nünning , 2012Nünning , 2014 and in passages that I contributed to introductions of co-edited volumes (see, e.g., Baumbach, Michaelis, and Nünning 2012;Nünning 2010, 2018). Sections 7 and 10 are largely based on a reframed summary of Nünning (2014), from which several ideas and passages have been adapted and only slightly rephrased.…”

Quantum fiction! – M. John Harrison’s Empty Space trilogy and Weird theory

“…Ansgar Nünning reminds us that '[w]hen the philosopher Nelson Goodman coined the felicitous term "ways of worldmaking", he was mainly concerned with the claim that the world we know is always already made "from other worlds".' 11 This applies to fictional worlds as well: any kind of narrative is usually connected to a basis outside that narrativeeither in the real world or in other fictionsand then 'built into a world' (193). Quantum physics comes in at the most basic ontological level.…”