Fiction has a major social impact, not least because it co-shapes the image that society has of various social groups. Drawing on a collection of 170 contemporary Dutch-language novels, Character Constellations presents a range of data-driven, statistical models to study depictions of characters in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, class, age, sexuality, and other identity categories. Incorporating the tools of network analysis, each chapter highlights an aspect of fictional social networks that affects the representation of social groups: their centrality, their communities, and their conflicts. While reading individual novels in light of emerging statistical patterns, combining the formal methods of social network analysis with the interpretive tools of narratology, this study shows how central societal themes such as (in)equality and emancipation, integration and segregation, and social mobility and class struggle are foregrounded, replicated, or distorted in the Dutch novel. Showcasing what character-based critiques of literary representation gain by integrating data-driven methods into the practice of critical close reading, Character Constellations contributes to societal debates on cultural representation and identity and the role

Although fictional characters have long dominated the reception of literature, films, television programs, comics, and other media products, only recently have they begun to attract their due attention in literary and media theory. The book systematically surveys today ́s diverse and at times conflicting theoretical perspectives on fictional character, spanning research on topics such as the differences between fictional characters and real persons, the ontological status of characters, the strategies of their representation and characterization, the psychology of their reception, as well as their specific forms and constellations in - and across - different media, from the book to the internet.

Now available in paperback! Until now, there was no theoretical research of character in children's fiction and very few comprehensive theoretical studies of literary characters in general. In her latest intellectual foray, the author of From Mythic to Linear ponders the art of characterization. Through a variety of critical perspectives, she uncovers the essential differences between story ('what we are told') and discourse ('how we are told'), and carefully distinguishes between how these are employed in children's fiction and in general fiction. Yet another masterful work by a leading figure in contemporary criticism.

Hansen-Love, that the meaning of a work of literature is generated by the interaction of paradigmatic and syntagmatic mechanisms. The image of character in Turgenev's stories is the result of devices characteristic of "narrative" as well as of "verbal art". It is partly created with the help of leitmotivs that form sequences of equivalences, and of intertextual references. Thus (social) representation is supplemented by lyrical and philosophical overtones. Comparable observations have been made by V. M. Markovic (1982) on Turgenev's novels, as well as on those by Puskin, Gogol and Lermontov.

The theory of Blending, or Conceptual Integration, proposed by Gilles Fauconnier and Marc Turner, is one of most promising cognitive theories of meaning production. It has been successfully applied to the analysis of poetic discourse and micro-textual elements, such as metaphor. Prose narrative has so far received significantly less attention. The present volume aims to remedy this situation. Following an introductory discussion of the connections between narrative and the processes of blending, the contributions demonstrate the range of applications of the theory to the study of narrative. They cover issues such as time and space, literary character and perspective, genre, story levels, and fictional minds; some chapters show how such phenomena as metalepsis, counterfactual narration, intermediality, extended metaphors, and suspense can be fruitfully studied from the vantage point of Conceptual Integration. Working within a theoretical framework situated at the intersection of narratology and the cognitive sciences, the book provides both fresh readings for individual literary and film narratives and new impulses for post-classical narratology.

The basic text for the understanding of patients with pathological narcissism.

Characters are central to our experiences of screened fictions and invite a host of questions. The contributors to Screening Characters draw on archival material, interviews, philosophical inquiry, and conceptual analysis in order to give new, thought-provoking answers to these queries. Providing multifaceted accounts of the nature of screen characters, contributions are organized around a series of important subjects, including issues of class, race, ethics, and generic types as they are encountered in moving image media. These topics, in turn, are personified by such memorable figures as Cary Grant, Jon Hamm, Audrey Hepburn, and Seul-gi Kim, in addition to avatars, online personalities, animated characters, and the ensembles of shows such as The Sopranos, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad.

The NATO Advanced Study Institute on Numerical Taxonomy took place on the 4th - 16th of July, 1982, at the Kur- und Kongresshotel Residenz in Bad Windsheim, Federal Republic of Germany. This volume is the proceedings of that meeting, and contains papers by over two-thirds of the participants in the Institute. Numerical taxonomy has been attracting increased attention from systematists and evolutionary biologists. It is an area which has been marked by debate and conflict, sometimes bitter. Happily, this meeting took place in an atmosphere of "GemUtlichkeit", though scarcely of unanimity. I believe that these papers will show that there is an increased understanding by each taxonomic school of each others' positions. This augurs a period in which the debates become more concrete and specific. Let us hope that they take place in a scientific atmosphere which has occasionally been lacking in the past. Since the order of presentation of papers in the meeting was affected by time constraints, I have taken the liberty of rearranging them into a more coherent subject ordering. The first group of papers, taken from the opening and closing days of the meeting, debate philosophies of classification. The next two sections have papers on congruence, clustering and ordination. A notable concern of these participants is the comparison and testing of classifications. This has been missing from many previous discussions of numerical classification.

In this Open Access book, film scholar Rasmus Greiner develops a theoretical model for the concept of the histosphere to refer to the “sphere” of a cinematically modelled, physically experienceable historical world. His analysis of practices of modelling and perceiving, immersion and empathy, experience and remembering, appropriation and refiguration, combine approaches from film studies, such as Vivian Sobchack’s phenomenology of film experience, with historiographic theories, such as Frank R. Ankersmit’s concept of historical experience. Building on this analysis, Greiner examines the spatial and temporal organization of historical films and presents discussions of mood and atmosphere, body and memory, and genre and historical consciousness. The analysis is based around three historical films, spanning six decades, that depict 1950s Germany: Helmut Käutner’s Sky Without Stars (1955), Jutta Brückner’s Years of Hunger (1980), and Sven Bohse’s three-part TV series Ku’damm 56 (2016).