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Title: Rhythm and Scalar Levels in Reading Fiction

Abstract:

Rhythm is a concept that is often informally applied to narrative, for instance when we talk about the slowness of a long novel or the fast pace of an action film. Current work in both the mind sciences and narrative theory allows us to think about the rhythmicity of narrative in a more systematic way. In this talk, I focus on the “scalability” of rhythm, how rhythmic patterns exist at multiple levels of the text-reader interaction. Using a short story by Lauren Groff (“Boca Raton”) as a case study, I explore rhythm as deriving from both bottom-up and top-down effects in narrative experience. I ground my discussion in recent developments within the cognitive sciences, particularly so-called “enactivist” approaches to the reader’s mind.

Bio:

Marco Caracciolo is an Associate Professor of English and Literary Theory at Ghent University in Belgium. Marco’s work explores the phenomenology of narrative, or the structure of the experiences afforded by literary fiction and other narrative media. He is the author of several books, including most recently With Bodies: Narrative Theory and Embodied Cognition (co-authored with Karin Kukkonen; Ohio State University Press, 2021) and Slow Narrative and Nonhuman Materialities (University of Nebraska Press, 2022).

You can listen to this seminar on EMMA Canal-U Tv channel:  https://www.canal-u.tv/chaines/emma/marco-caracciolo-rhythm-and-scalar-levels-in-reading-fiction

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