The rhythms of narrative tension and its cultural satisfaction

Abstract

Critics reading narratives as progressions, that’s to say, from beginning to end, prefer to see meaning emerge as a result of the interaction between different elements in the narrative, rather than of the imposition of a priori cultural schemata. This article, however, argues for the possibility of using a priori cultural schemata, as long as these pass through the filters established by theories of narrative progression. To show how this is done, I will interpret Frank Miller’s comic 300 by letting a tool of cultural-semantic analysis interact with narrative tension in the form of suspense, curiosity, and surprise. I argue that the back and forth between narrative tension and the tool accounts not only for the content of the comic but also for its basic narrative rhythm.

Extending the embodied semiotic square: A cultural-semantic analysis of “Follow your Arrow”

“…I will argue that the act of enacting validity can be improved on, but with a different kind of semiotic square. In the present article, I will therefore 'construct' such a different semiotic square out of a cultural-semantic tool of analysis I have developed (Candel 2013a(Candel , 2013b(Candel , 2013c(Candel , 2016(Candel , 2018a(Candel , 2018b henceforth called CS-tool. The square has its own distinctive features, wherefore I will above all use Pelkey's, but also other arguments, to ground this particular square in cognitive theory (Section 3).…”