Although narrative philosophy or thought is the fundamental concept supporting this study, a point different from the previous studies relating to narrative philosophy is that this study aims to make products in the technological field of narrative generation systems instead of philosophy or thought about narrative itself. From the viewpoint of philosophy or thought, the narrative generation systems are applications. In contrast, from the goal of narrative generation systems, philosophy or thought corresponds to a kind of strategic framework for establishing the vision, strategy, and direction. In particular, the first philosophical concept is “multiple narrative structures.” Next, the author addresses the following three concepts: “circular narrative control,” “fluidity and fixation,” and “norm and deviation.” They are not concepts that are respectively individual. These philosophical concepts build the dynamic characteristics of narrative generation through their interrelationships.
TopIntroduction
As mentioned previously, one aspect of the narrative generation study in this book is the systematic and synthetic characteristic. Generally, systematic features of academic fields are supported by corresponding ways of thinking and philosophies or by fundamental or background information about a research object. Of course, an extreme purpose is not the construction of thought and the philosophy of narrative, but the technological implementation of the social development of narrative generation systems. In this chapter, first, BACKGROUND: RELATED PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS IN NARRATOLOGY AND LITERARY THEORIES shows various previous examples regarding narrative-related philosophies and thoughts.
Next, in A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE SYNTHETIC COMPREHENSION OF NARRATIVE GENERATION: MULTIPLE NARRATIVE STRUCTURES MODEL AND EXPANDED LITERARY THEORY, the author introduces the two most basic and closely related philosophical ideas for narrative generation: the multiple narrative structures model and expanded literary theory. This section explains them in detail and concretely. Another viewpoint on the expanded literary theory is also discussed in the section of Expanded Literary Theory Seen from Another Perspective: Technology and Management in Narrative Generation.
CONCEPTS FOR DYNAMIC NARRATIVE GENERATION PROCESSES discusses the dynamic features in a narrative generation process through the following three philosophical concepts: “circular narrative control,” “normative and deviation,” and “fluidity and fixation.” First, the concept of circular narrative control means that a narrative generation is cyclically performed and indicates the flexibility and freeness of generation order. The normative and deviated generations also form the dynamism of narrative generation. The concept of fluidity and fixation shows that a narrative generation process is performed between fluid generation and fixed texts. In summary, circular narrative control means the circular continuation of narrative generation through various types of information; fluidity and fixation and normative and deviation mean the change of weighting in the continuous circulation. The author intends to consider the dynamics of narrative generation by their combination. Furthermore, the author discusses plural strategies in narrative generation in the section of PLURAL STRATEGIES IN NARRATIVE GENERATION AS A SYNTHETIC DISCUSSION, as the last philosophical idea presented here to support the author’s narrative generation study. Although it can be positioned as part of the multiple narrative structures model, it gets an independent section in this chapter.
TopAs described in the previous chapters, the interdisciplinary study of narrative generation, which is called post-narratology in Chapter 3, stems from a background of narratology and literary theories. Narratology and literary theories provide technological methodologies for narrative and literature. At the same time, they also provide methodologies for approaching how humans recognize the world. In particular, narratology and literary theories originally had a philosophical orientation. This section considers them from the philosophical perspective.
In addition, many philosophies related to narratives exist, other than the topics in described in the following sentences. In particular, the following description does not include the narrative studies by Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) (1990); historical narratologies by Arthur Danto (1924-2013) (1965), Hayden White (1928-2018) (1973), and Noe (1996, 2007); or fictional world theories (Noya, 1999; Nagai, 2016). In the future, the author plans to provide a more detailed introduction that includes these topics and the knowledge of Japanese literature and geinō to discuss original narrative philosophy and thought.