Toward a Critical Approach to Worlds and World-Building (original) (raw)
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Notes Toward a Critical Approach to Worlds and World-Building
Imaginary worlds and how they are constructed are central to fiction. The term world-building, however, has been applied so broadly in scholarship that it has become ambiguous and difficult to use in critical discussions. Aiming to contribute to greater clarity in the critical use of the term, this article introduces the concept of critical world-building. This is distinguished from other types of world-building, such as that performed by an author or reader, mainly by the fact that a critic analyses a world through a combination of their sequential presentation, as complete world, and with critical interpretation and theoretical filters in place, applying all three perspectives simultaneously. Two possible approaches to critical world-building are presented, based on the functions of a world’s building-blocks and how to interpret those functions. The first approach focuses on a world’s “architecture” – its structural and aesthetic system of places – and the form, function, and meaning of those places. The second emphasises the dynamic interplay between building-blocks and their interconnections in a web of explicit, implied, and interpreted information about the world. The authors base their discussion on textual, secondary fantasy worlds but invite applications of critical world-building to other genres and media.
Journal of Language, Literature and Culture, 2016
Dialectics of Space and Place across Virtual and Corporeal Topographies, ed. June Jordaan, Carl Haddrell and Christine Alegria, Oxford 2016, pp. 151-164
"In herein paper I shall argue, whether Umberto Eco’s definition of allotopia (Il mondi della fantascienza, 1984) as another, alternate but still “more real than the real one” world should not be revised in the light of cognitive narratology (VR, immersion and storyworlds in Marie-Laure Ryan 1991, Hermann 2002), constructivism (‘reduction of complexity’ in Luhmann 1984), psychonarratology (immersion in Nell 1988, Gerrig 1993) and topography of literature. Following Bernhard Waldenfels’ (1997, 2006) notes on the nature of otherworldliness and its liaisons with what I call ‘xenotopography’, I shall examine whether the typically fantastic trichotomic model of world (empirical world → symbolical gate → counterempirical world) is not nowadays being replaced with pre-established, immersive and imaginative storyworld (purum figmentum). Consequently, I shall claim that the philosophical premises of allotopia and world-building alike are comprising the significant shift between 20th and 21st century prose which manifests in the tendency to create a storyworld prior to the storyline—a ‘matrix for all possible narratives’ (Dukaj 2010). Thus, allotopia will have become a perfect term for a multitude of topographico-literary tendencies, just to mention world-building think-tanks in nearly every video game studio or fictional encyclopaedias, thoroughly describing geography, topography, cartography and chronography (cf. Gavriel Rosenveld’s term of allohistory) of a given storyworld, like for instance the Wookiepaedia for Star Wars franchise or K. W. Fonstad’s The Atlas of Middle-Earth for the preconceived world of J. R. R. Tolkien’s. The utterance of allotopian encyclopaedias in the coherent “heterocosm of reference’ (Hutcheon 1987) will be exemplified in Frank Herbert’s Dune, Neal Stephenson’s Anathem and Jacek Dukaj’s Inne Pieśni (‘Other Poems’)—novels peculiarly difficult to classify using typical nomenclature (they represent neither fantasy, nor SF, nor even a postmodern or magical realist novel). Moreover, as this prose is adhering the concept of ortsgebunden (Hausherr 1970)—i. e. the ‘place bound nature of literary forms’—by modelling spatial and spatio-temporal heterotopian frontiers within the allotopian storyworld, it allows to confront different ethnoses, places, or even lesser worlds—but not any more fairy-tale-bound empirical world which bestows upon a fantastic venturer the promising (though illusory) law to return."
World literature and the creation of literary worlds
Neohelicon, 2011
Based on the author’s work as general editor of the Norton Anthology of World Literature, the essay develops an approach to world literature centered on world creation. The creation of literary worlds can be understood within the framework of possible worlds theory as developed by Thomas Pavel, Lubomir Dolezel and others. Taking its point of departure from possible worlds theory, the essay then focuses on specific genres that foreground the capacity of literature to create whole worlds, including world creation myths and science fiction. Three terms are used to analyze this body of literature: refer- ence; scale; and model. While the category of reference accounts for the status of the worlds to be found within literary works, scale and model capture the particular challenges world creation literature faces.
Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research, 2019
In this essay, I look at non-narratival world-building. I introduce the concept of critical world-building and outline my view of world-building as architecture. "World-architecture" then provides the basis for my analysis. I propose that the world-architectural way of reading a world would work just as well with worlds built in any medium, textual or non-textual, narrated or non-narrated. My first example shows how a collection of “lore” in a computer game or (in my case) a graphic-novel app can offer material for a scholar who analyses the world of the story. Then I turn to a world without any explicit narrative, using the illustrations from a Dungeons & Dragons rule book to show what they can say about the implied game world.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2019
Today, more than ever, audiences are surrounded by imaginary worlds in which a wide variety of products and activities can be fully explored through multiple media windows. Imaginary worlds allow members of the audience to enter vicariously in the narrative space, spending a certain amount of time in speculative and explorative activities, experiencing the 'possible world' through the stories set within it. According to this, it is possible to differentiate between story and storyworld. While ' stories' are self-enclosed arrangements of causal events that come to an end in a certain period of time, ' storyworlds' are mental constructions shared between recipients and authors in which new storylines can be developed. This paper aims to discuss the implication of world-building activity for the design practice. Considering narratives and world-making practices as a matter of design, this essay will tackle the following question: how can a designer use the creation of storyworlds in his practice to activate new perspectives on specific contexts? In doing so, the first part of the essay is a brief summary of how imaginary worlds have evolved through the decades. Then, the second part is devoted to the