Comparative Overview of the Forms of Storytelling with Reference to the
Digital Age
Prof. Dilip Barad,
Dept. of English, M.K. Bhavnagar University
How to cite this article:
MLA Style:
Barad, Dilip. "Comparative Overview of the Forms
of Storytelling with Reference to the Digital Age." Spark International
Online Journal III.3 (2011): 35-61.
APA Style:
Barad, D. (2011, Aug). Comparative Overview of the
Forms of Storytelling with Reference to the Digital Age. (B. Parmar, Ed.) Spark
International Online Journal, III(3), 35-61.
Abstract
Over the ages the form
of storytelling has undergone significant changes. The Sanskrit and Greek
masters were happy in telling their stories in form of verse letters, plays and
epics; in the 18th century
‘Novel’ was seen as the most suitable form for storytelling. In the 20th
century, the fragmented life found its expression in theatre of absurd, problem
plays and the life full of hurry and flurry gave shorter forms like novella,
one-act plays and short stories. At the fag-end of the first decade of the 21st
century, some forms have emerged to cater the needs of techno-savvy netizens.
The Epistolary form of telling story initiated by Richardson in ‘Pamela’ found
its new manifestation in Matt Beaumont’s novel ‘e’ in 2000. Matt
has experimented with the epistolary form by replacing letters by emails among
the characters. The advent of e-novels is seen as yet another step further in
the evolution of new forms of telling story, and yet another form to mesmerize
the world with its synergism of words and videos is in the buds. This new form
of storytelling is ‘vook’ – a word coined for ‘video-book’.
This paper attempts to compare the changing forms of
storytelling, and also aims to examine the connection between at the forms of
literature, changing times and tastes of the reading audience.
 |
| Wordle of the Abstract |
“Over
all [the scholar’s work] should rule a searching intelligence, asking that
fundamental question of the septic: just
what do you mean by that? And if the question is asked with a real
desire to know and understand . . . the work is done.” - G.R. Elton, The Practice of History (New York, 1967) 141. (Altic 1993)
At
the heart of literature is telling story, and its success depends on how well the story is
told. How well it is told, however, depends largely on the pleasure it gives to
readers. This pleasure, if it is conditioned by ‘the law of poetic truth and
poetic beauty’ (Arnold 2001), elevates the story to the height of a classic.
The pleasure quenched by the reader from the truth and beauty of literature is
also governed by the race, milieu and the moment. I mean to say, the taste of
the reader and the time in which it is written also has its own aesthetic
influence on the art of telling story.
The
poor peasants and brave warriors of Greece and Mahabharata found dramas and
epics better forms of story telling to quench their thirst for aesthetic life.
Reaching to this point in the history of narrating story for aesthetic pleasure
and to teach moral lessons on niti-shastra, it has undergone important changes.
Slowly and steadily, the oral tradition metamorphosed into written and from
there into performing art. The Aesop’s fables (Long 2011) in the West and Panchatantra & Hitopadesha in East
had its beginning in oral story telling (Wikipedia). Later on they were found
in written form.
From
here on wards, I would rather concentrate on the literary tradition in
Literature in English than on world literature, because by speaking on changing
art of story telling of world literature, I would display my ignorance than
knowledge.
Coming
to the 18th century, the century where in new forms of telling stories
are experimented and invented, we find that the fire, fine feelings,
enthusiasm, the glow of the Renaissance and the moral earnestness of Puritanism
(Long 2004) is lost from their art of telling story. Renaissance was the time
of fiery passion, hunger to grow, unlimited enthusiasm to achieve the
unachievable and never ending passion for life. Thus the classical form of
telling story i.e. Drama, found its new format in Christopher Marlow. Though,
still it is drama and poetry only, yet the performance of drama is quite
different than that of classical Greek & Latin masters. Use of Blank verse,
breaking of unities and mixture of tragicomedies gave new style to the old art
of telling story. Shakespeare polished all the gems that were invented by
Marlowe in such a shining state that none can make it more polished there
after. It was John Dryden (1668) Who said this to enumerate the phenomenon in ‘Of
Dramatik Poesie, An Essay: “Those beauties of
the French poesy
are such ... it where it is
not: they are indeed the beauties of a statue but not of a man”. The plays written
by Shakespeare and University with all deformities of plot construction and
characterization were still true representation of human soul and nature.
During
renaissance and reformation, we had the tradition of telling story in prose
form also. The University Wits and thereafter John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, Addison
and Steele carried on this tradition and went on adding a component or two by
the time Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) and Henry Fielding (1707-1754) turned it
into the new form of telling story – well-known today as NOVEL. (Watt 1957)
The
spread of education led to more readers. The way technique of making papers
migrated from China to Europe and Gutenberg’s printing press encouraged more
writing, similarly education helped in the spread of more magazines and prose
writing. Thus 18th century has more number of magazines and novels
to cater the needs of the reading public. The education to females in 18th
century gave rise to more number of female readers. (Compton-Rickett) The coarseness
of Fielding, Smollett and Stern did not satisfy the aesthetic urge of these female
readers. Thus we have women novelist in abundance in the same years.
Thus
we can perceive that the time, the moment, the philosophies and thoughts of the
era has tremendous impact on the art of telling story. Compton- Ricket has
rightly noted in The History of English Literature (1946) that the masculine
qualities comprehend a broad grasp of general principles, a logical constructive
power of a faulty for dealing largely and sanely with the big issues of life.
The feminine qualities on the other hand, lie in subtlety rather than vigor of
perception, an intuitive insight into the delicate complexities of character and
an intensity and tenacity of passion. As
illustrations of the masculine and feminine methods of approaching the social
life to the late 18th century we have Fielding and Jane Austen, each
of them essentially a painter of manners, concerned in the difference between
town and country, satirical in treatment, eschewing sentiment as far as
possible. Between the, we have a wonderful picture of the time, and the one
complements the other, for the difference are rather sexual than purely literal
– the one, bold, dashing, painting strong, vivid colours; the other, delicate,
subtle, avoiding violent contrasts, and dealing rather in nuances.
This
proves the point how art of story telling differed from man to woman. The
education and experience of Fielding, the man on the roads, and Austen, the
woman of the house, reflects the moments lived by the society in their
predefined horizons.
The
increasing number of readers gave rise to NOVEL as the most sought after form
of telling story. The Victorians found in Novel what Elizabethans sought in
plays.
The
rise of magazines contributed to the rise of short story also. (Watson 1994). Short
stories were a staple of early-19th-century magazines and often led to fame and
novel-length projects for their authors, similar to one-act plays.
In
the modern times, industrialization & growth of factories influenced the
reading habits of people which in turn influenced creative writing also. (Ward
1978). The life became so fast that people were not able to spare more time to
read long novels or see long plays. The short story and one-act plays were more
suitable form of telling story for such an audience. Thus we find more numbers
of such arts of telling stories in 19th and 20th century.
But
still we find that the art of telling story is not that experimentative. The
path and faith breaking philosophies of 19th and 20th
century has its own toll on the art of telling stories. Darwin’s proving that
the world in not created by God (1860), Freud’s libidal interpretation of human
relationship (1896c) and Nietzsche’s
final declaration – God is death (1882), shattered the faith of creative
genius. It is well said by Mahesh Bhatt (film maker) that artist as a creative
person is abnormally and inhumanly sensitive – for him a touch is a blow, a sound
is noise and ay misfortune a tragedy. (qt from The Times of India article – “Is
M.F. Hussain a Victim?”)
The
influence of art of telling story does not require detailed mention here. The
shattered faith fragmented the lives of people. The remaining work was done by
two world wars. The witness of First World War and life under the thread of
second was terrible for the sensitive creative mind. What we find in fragmented
art of telling story. In fact, there is no story at all. It is all rambling of
thoughts, trying to say something, utterance fail to express their anguished
anxiety. Thus, the stream of consciousness in novel, collage in poem of TS
Eliot, Auden and Yeats, absurdity in plays took place of sanity in telling
stories. Martin Esslin (1967) makes a working hypothesis of the traits of
story-telling art of these decades in his famous book. ‘The Theatre of the
Absurd’.
The
modernist art of telling story is the best example of how philosophical
discourse can interpose its influence on it. The time it self was shattered and
fragmented. Nothingness was the meaning and nihilism was their only optimism.
The story tellers of the time faithfully reflected this in their art of telling
stories.
The
post modernist era was the time of deconstructionist ideology. In the modernist
art of telling story, thought the stories were fragmented and nothingness was
the only thing, yet the centre hold the ground strongly. In post modernism, the
centre is de-centered. There was an attempt to identify meaning in
meaninglessness of modernist art of telling story; here the meaning is nothing
but free play of difference and deffarance (Derrida 1966). The centre is at the
periphery and the periphery is at the centre. Thus Coetzee’s (1986) art of
telling story has the centre in Friday ( in novel , 1986) and not in Robinson
(Defoe). Mahabharat is retold from Draupadi’s view point. (Vaidya Spivak)
Julian Branes’s The History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters has a narration form
woodworms angel and not from Noah’s. Derridian influence gave free play of
experiment in telling stories. Derrida’s philosophical discourse impacted the
art of story telling. Dattani’s plays have entre in eunuchs and HIV patients
(Kumar T). Sarojini Sahoo’s feminist discourse undermines the western feminist
discourse of Simon De Bouevier and gave rise to Indian feminism. Similarly,
Dalit aestheticism is also on the high rise.
Whatever
may be the influencing force, the last decades of 20th century
betrayed several experiments in the art of story telling. Thus, Author John
Fowles’s novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) has three endings. This
novel is a period novel inspired by the 1823 novel Ourika, by Claire de Duras,
which Fowles translated to English during 1977 (and revised in 1994).
Other
interesting experiments in art of telling story were done by B S Johnson. The
Unfortunates (1969) was published in a box with no binding (readers
could assemble the book any way they liked) and House Mother Normal
(1971) was written in purely chronological order such that the various
characters' thoughts and experiences would cross each other and become intertwined,
not just page by page, but sentence by sentence. B. S. Johnson's infamous
book-in-a-box is, if remembered at all, notorious for its presentation rather
than its content. The "book" consists of a first and last section
plus 25 other chapters, each one coming as a self-contained
"pamphlet", that can be read in any order the reader likes. The
subject matter concerns a journalist's day covering a football match in
Nottingham, remembering previous times spent in the city with a lover now gone
and a friend now dead. The innovative format permits Johnson to echo the random
thought processes of his protagonist--the associations and reminiscences
bubbling up in no fixed order as he walks through the city, watches and reports
on the match and returns home afterwards.
We
have curios experiment in novel ‘A Void’ by Georges Perec (1995). A Void
(translated from the original French La
Disparition (literally, "The Disappearance") is a 300-page French
lipogrammatic
novel,
written in 1969 by Georges Perec, entirely without using the
letter e
(except for the author's name), following Oulipo
constraints.
The
website www.fantasticfiction.com
has curious collection of such experimental novels written and published in
later decades of 20th century.
If
all these ages were marked by some peculiar social, political, economical,
philosophical, anthropological etc contemporary issues, the 21st
century is marked by the IT revolution. The time in which we live is known as
the time of e-renaissance. Information and communication technology has brought
in sweeping change in all walks of life. The technological tsunami began in
wild waves in 80s and 90s. Today, as we enter second decade of 21st
century, the world in deluged under the splurge of techno-tsunami waves. Now
the question is has this revolution brought any change in art of telling story?
Well,
forget about the literary value of his novels for time being. Just see what is
the moving fore in the plot in his novels: the mobiles, internet and call
centers. Yes, Chetan Bhagat’s One Night @ Call Centre (2005) has technology at
its centre. Now, the God does not say in thunder, but He rings and talks on
your mobile phones. Now, too much of thinking or rash actions are not fatal
flaws or hamartia. The fatal flaw is leaving your email account open without
logging out/signing out before leaving PC/laptop. In Three Mistakes of My Life
(2008), the mobile call from best friend’s sister during climax brings havoc in
the life of protagonist. Today, it is unimaginable to think of the story where
in mobile or internet is not an important part of the play and vital part to
play.
It
is not only movers and shakers of plot, but the form of telling story is also
affected. At the fag-end of the first decade of the 21st century,
some forms have emerged to cater the needs of techno-savvy netizens. The
Epistolary form of telling story initiated by Richardson in ‘Pamela’ found its new manifestation
in Matt Beaumont’s novel ‘e’ in 2007. Matt has
experimented with the epistolary form by replacing letters by emails among the characters. Thus,
the novel is a multiple-perspective narrative where events are seen through the
eyes of various people working for the agency, from temporary workers to CEO. e (novel) centers around corporate
business structures, leadership, creativity, headhunting for and firing people
to keep up appearances, work efficiency, business ethics, and all kinds of
human weaknesses which stall progress by having employees waste their time and
energy on unimportant things and which eventually prevent success. The advent
of e-novels is seen as yet another step further in the evolution of new forms
of telling story.
The
characterization, situations, plots, etc are changing and finding new
alterations. Even Sidney Sheldon type pulp fiction or J.K. Rowling type child
fiction or Poe type detective fiction are affected by the digital wave. We have
not Cyberpunk to replace traditional classical pulp fictions. Cyberpunk is
a postmodern and science
fiction genre noted for its focus
on "high tech and low life." The name was
originally coined by Bruce Bethke as
the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983 It features advanced science, such as information technologyand cybernetics,
coupled with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order. Cyberpunk works are well situated
within postmodern literature.(Wikipedia Cyberpunk).
Collaboration
as against isolation is the key word in the digital age. Social media is
nothing but collaborating. It seems that suddenly everybody want to
‘speak/write’. Listeners or readers are fast becoming rare species. Well, this
trend of life is mirrored in Penguin project of WikiNovel.
A Million Penguins, the wiki-novel experiment
currently underway at Penguin Books is trying to find out if a self-organizing
collective of writers can produce a credible novel on a live website. A dubious
idea if you believe a novel is almost by definition the product of a singular
inspiration, but praiseworthy nonetheless for its experimental bravado. Though
the project has not succeed yet, nearly 1500
individuals have contributed to the writing and editing of A Million Penguins,
contributing over 11,000 edits making this, in the words of Penguin’s Chief
Executive, ‘not the most read, but possibly the most written novel in
history‘. 75000 people have visited the site and there have been more
than 280,000 page views.( Ettinghausen 2007)
Such
experiments in writing literature along lead one to think of the demise of
literature. Kernan Alvin (1992) takes a critical look at the changing paradigm
in society because of the influence of digital ways of life and tries to
connect with with the literature. Let me quote at length from the review of his
book ‘The Death of Literature:
“Kernan
Alvin probes deeper, relating the death of literature
to potent forces in our postindustrial world—most obviously, the technological
revolution that is rapidly transforming a print to an electronic culture,
replacing the authority of the written word with the authority of television,
film, and computer screens. The turn taken by literary criticism itself, in
deconstructing traditional literature and declaring it void of meaning in
itself, and in focusing on what are described as its ideological biases against
women and nonwhites, has speeded the disintegration. Recent legal debates about
copyright, plagiarism, and political patronage of the arts have exposed the
greed and self-interest at work under the old romantic images of the
imaginative creative artist and the work of art as a perfect, unchanging
icon. Kernan describes a number of the crossroads where literature and
society have met and literature has failed to stand up. He discusses the high
comedy of the obscenity trial in England against Lady Chatterley's Lover, in which the British literary establishment
vainly tried to define literature. He takes alarmed looks at such agents of
literary disintegration as schools where children who watch television eight
hours a day can't read, decisions about who chooses and defines the words
included in dictionaries, faculty fights about the establishment of new
departments and categories of study, and courtrooms where criminals try to
profit from bestselling books about their crimes. According to Kernan,
traditional literature is ceasing to be legitimate or useful in these changed
social surroundings. What is needed, he says, if it is any longer possible in
electronic culture, is a conception of literature that fits in some positive
way with the new ethos of post-industrialism, plausibly claiming a place of importance
both to individual lives and to society as a whole for the best kind of
writing.” (Kernan yalepress.yale.edu)
It
is difficult to disagree with Kernan. The Gutenberg has tolled the death of
printed poem or novels. As an alternative to this Apocalypse of print, some
theorists, critics or artists have already found solutions of „escape”. New
forms of literary practice access digital resources and force the boundaries of
„literature” to expand to visual, cybernetic, hyper-textual territories.
(Echinox Journal 2011). This experience of visual, cybernetic &
hyper-textual is experimented in form of Vook. (www.vook.com).
WHAT IS A VOOK?
A vook is a new innovation in
reading that blends a well-written book, high-quality video and the power of
the Internet into a single, complete story.
You can read your book, watch
videos that enhance the story and connect with authors and your friends through
social media all on one screen, without switching between platforms.
Vooks are available in two
formats: As a web-based application you can read on your computer and a mobile
application for reading on the go. With the web-based application you don't
have to download programs or install software. Just open your favorite browser
and start reading and watching in an exciting new way. You can also download
and install the mobile applications through the Apple iTunes store and sync
them with your Apple mobile device.
Vook has a simple idea: put great
filmmakers together with great authors and let them create a new kind of media.
But for this to succeed, we need a talented filmmaker who can be imaginative,
work with another creative vision and shoot and edit for an entirely new form.
For
more than 500 years the book has been a remarkably stable entity: a coherent
string of connected words, printed on paper and bound between covers. (Vook)
But
in the age of the iPhone, Kindle and YouTube, the notion of the book is
becoming increasingly elastic as publishers mash together text, video and Web features
in a scramble to keep readers interested in an archaic form of entertainment.
The readers are invited to log on to a Web site to watch brief videos that
flesh out the plot.
Some
publishers say this kind of multimedia hybrid is necessary to lure modern
readers who crave something different. But reading experts question whether
fiddling with the parameters of books ultimately degrades the act of reading.
(Rich 2009)
I
would like to quote at length form what Moroko Rich reported in The New York
Times (Oct 1, 2009 Pg A1)
“There is no
question that these new media are going to be superb at engaging and
interesting the reader,” said Maryanne Wolf, a professor of child development
at Tufts University and
author of “Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.”
But, she added, “Can you any longer read Henry James or George
Eliot? Do you have the patience?”
The
most obvious way technology has changed the literary world is with electronic
books. Over the past year devices like Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader have gained
in popularity. But the digital editions displayed on these devices remain
largely faithful to the traditional idea of a book by using words — and
occasional pictures — to tell a story or explain a subject
Simon &
Schuster is also releasing two digital novels combining text with videos a
minute or 90 seconds long that supplement — and in some cases advance — the story
line.
“Everybody
is trying to think about how books and information will best be put together in
the 21st century,” said Judith Curr, publisher of Atria Books, the Simon &
Schuster imprint that is releasing the electronic editions in partnership with Vook,
a multimedia company. She added, “You can’t just be linear anymore with your
text.” (Rich 2009)
Well, the
question may arise at the end of this paper reading that ‘what is the meaning
of this comparative survey of art of telling story? I would end this paper with
following stolen words – quoted randomly from ‘The Search is All?: The Pursuit
of Meaning in Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot,
Staring at the Sun and A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters’
written by Wojciech Drag.
“For Oliver, who
found the whole idea deeply embarrassing?” Originally used by
Terry Eagleton
to opens his recent book entitled The
Meaning of Life (2007). What is more, in the preface he notes that
writing about such a suspect concept as “the meaning of life” seems “fit for the
crazed and the comic”. Why is the notion of “meaning” embarrassing to explore?
Why are we so wary of it? Possible answers are many. One of them is that we
have come to live in an age that distrusts “big words” and concepts which
purport to account for the totality of human existence, which disregard variety
and difference. The postmodern thought, which highlights the contingency of
human life and announces the lack of any solid foundation to it calls into
question the notion of absolute meaning and regards it as redolent of “an
old-fashioned metaphysics”. The search for absolute meaning, I will argue, can
also find its expression in a desire to establish a stable context of
interpretation (such as religion or art) – a framework through which one can
understand one’s own experience and make sense of it. It may also take the form
of a longing for truth and authenticity, which would stand firm and intact in
confrontation with the relativity, skepticism and moral chaos that appear
implicit in the postmodern age marked by the demise of grand narratives. In the
times when no new ideas are to be expressed, what we find is experiments with
forms of expression. The end of cognitive receptivity deadens the creative grey
cells of human mind. Is it the absence of creativity that more importance is
given to form of expression rather
than the idea of expression?
May be it is the urge for instant gratification or to satisfy sensual pleasure
that these sort of mingling of words and videos are experimented. May be it is
the habit of techno-savvy mind to go for multi-tasking – doing several things
at a time – reading, viewing, listening, discussing on social network,
interacting with author and other readers – that these forms are emerging. During
Modernist era, Eliots, Pounds James Joyces and Beketts were in search of form
of expression which can express the fragmented existed of world war worn
generation. They found in stream of consciousness, absurd theatre and mythical
technique. May be today’s writer wants synergism of words and videos for better
expression of their ideas and to give what reader wants.
Yes,
the traditional ways of writing literature and reading literature is on death
bed. In all ages past, we have experienced at each and every fin de siècle there is conflict between
the new and the old. For the time being while the transition is happening, we
find literature with the traits of the old and the new. It’s a different matter
that such literature is hated by both, the old readers and the new readers.
Shakespeare’s plays were compared with bedlam asylum. Wordsworth’s poems were
considered childish, D.H. Lawrence was porno-writer, T.S. Eliot was not
understood to the Moderns. Today, they are all ‘classics’. In a new era of globalization and terrorism, Eagleton
(2003) warns, the bundle of ideas known as post-modernism is essentially
toothless. In this eloquent synthesis of a lifetime of learning, Eagleton
challenges contemporary intellectuals to engage with a range of vital
topics-love, evil, death, morality, religion, and revolution-that they've
ignored over the past thirty years. In his cry for more holistic and humane way
of "reading" the world, it becomes essential to see how art of
storytelling is undergoing sweeping change under the influence of digital age.
It would be interesting to watch how will comparative literature and
literary theory respond to these new practices? Will the theorists and critics
consider “old” theories fulfilled by the „empowerment of the reader”? Will they
feel the need to forge new concepts and new methods? Or will they seek entirely
new perspectives to which traditional methods can be adjusted? Alternative
conceptual and methodological discourses emerge in present-day discourses on
literature, springing from totally different points of view. The expansion of
literature beyond the paper-written support and the expansion of digital media
to the realms of literature engage writers and researchers of the literary
field in a rethinking of their own creative identity and of their disciplinary
approach. (Echinox Journal)
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