Puzzling Stories -

Puzzling Stories

The Aesthetic Appeal of Cognitive Challenge in Film, Television and Literature
Buch | Hardcover
408 Seiten
2022
Berghahn Books (Verlag)
978-1-80073-591-0 (ISBN)
179,95 inkl. MwSt
Many films and novels defy our ability to make sense of the plot. This book offers the first comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and trans-medial approach to the question of cognitive challenge in narrative art, bringing together psychological, philosophical, formal-historical, and empirical perspectives from leading scholars across these fields.
Many films and novels defy our ability to make sense of the plot. While puzzling storytelling, strange incongruities, inviting enigmas and persistent ambiguities have been central to the effects of many literary and cinematic traditions, a great deal of contemporary films and television series bring such qualities to the mainstream—but wherein lies the attractiveness of perplexing works of fiction? This collected volume offers the first comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and trans-medial approach to the question of cognitive challenge in narrative art, bringing together psychological, philosophical, formal-historical, and empirical perspectives from leading scholars across these fields.

Steven Willemsen is Assistant Professor in Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Groningen and Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt. He is co-author of Impossible Puzzle Films: A Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema (with Miklós Kiss, Edinburgh University Press, 2017).

Introduction

Steven Willemsen and Miklós Kiss



Part I: THE ATTRACTIONS OF COGNITIVE CHALLENGE IN (POST-)CLASSICAL NARRATIVES & GENRE FICTION



Chapter 1. Aesthetics and ‘Active Discovery’: The Pleasure of Moderate Cognitive Challenge in Mass Art

Todd Berliner



Chapter 2. Narration, Implicature, and the Deceptive Puzzle Film

Warren Buckland



Chapter 3. Cognitive Challenge in Complex Science Fiction: Knowledge, Reason and Threat in Narratives of Time Travel and Extraterrestrial Contact

Hilary Duffield



Chapter 4. Strange Loops and Nonhuman Realities: Complex Narrative Faces the Climate Crisis

Marco Caracciolo



Part II: MESMERIZED MINDS & BODIES: ART-CINEMA & MODERNIST AESTHETICS



Chapter 5. The Puzzling Film Environments of Fellini’s 8½

Steffen Hven



Chapter 6. 2 or 3 Things? Polyphony, Cognitive Challenge and Aesthetic Pleasure in Godard’s (Counter) Cinema

Maria Poulaki



Chapter 7. Embodying Fragmentation in Film: The Spatio-temporal Logic of Cinematic Modernism

Maarten Coëgnarts



Chapter 8. The Most Difficult Riddle

András Bálint Kovács



Part III: NOVEL PLEASURES IN CONTEMPORARY SERIAL TELEVISION: FROM COMPLEXITY TO CONFUSION



Chapter 9. Multiform Television

Matthew Campora



Chapter 10. ‘I Can’t Keep Track of Any of It Anymore’: Cognitive Challenge and Other Aesthetic Appeals in Community

Jason Gendler



Chapter 11. How Not to Comprehend Television: Notes on Complexity and Confusion

Jason Mittell



Part IV: READING, VIEWING, ENGAGING: CONCEPTUALIZING THE PLEASURES OF BEING CHALLENGED



Chapter 12. Challenges of Enjoying Morally Ambiguous Character Drama: The Dexter Case

Ed S. Tan, Monique Timmers, Claire M. Segijn, Suzanna J. Opree, Guus Bartholomé



Chapter 13. The Fascination of Failure: On Predictability, Unpredictability and Postdictability in Art

Marina Grishakova



Chapter 14. Expressive Challenge and the Metaphoricity of Literary Reading

Don Kuiken



Chapter 15. Who Likes Complex Films? Personality and Preferences for Narrative Complexity

Steven Willemsen, Katalin Bálint, Frank Hakemulder, Miklós Kiss, Elly Konijn, Kirill Fayn



Index

Erscheinungsdatum
Verlagsort Oxford
Sprache englisch
Maße 152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt Kunst / Musik / Theater Film / TV
Geisteswissenschaften Psychologie
Geisteswissenschaften Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft Anglistik / Amerikanistik
Geisteswissenschaften Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft
Sozialwissenschaften Kommunikation / Medien Medienwissenschaft
ISBN-10 1-80073-591-X / 180073591X
ISBN-13 978-1-80073-591-0 / 9781800735910
Zustand Neuware
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