Let me invite you to reflect on the question of space in stories. David Herman, an important narrative theorist at Ohio State University has developed a special word to describe the spaces that we inhabit when we engage with a narrative. He calls this space Storyworlds. I use storyworld to suggest something of the world creating power of narrative. Its ability to transport interpreters from the here and now of face-to-face interaction to the here and now of the world being told about. Ordinarily, when we think about spacial issues, we think about setting. How does an author create a setting in a novel just using words? >> He maps the setting. >> Yeah. >> Mm-hm. Describes maybe houses or, or geographical feature. >> So he uses description, if she uses description, do you all like description in novels? >> I think it adds, description adds an element of richness to the story. >> I love the word adds though, it never really captures the supplementary nature of description. Well, let's get an example. I have, had a picture of one of my main characters in LOTRO at the Stone Trolls. I want us to look at Tolkien's description of this scene. And see how he describes the setting. The sun was now high, and it shone down through the half-stripped branches of the trees, and lit the path with bright patches of light. There stood the trolls: three large trolls. The picture there is a picture from the game. You notice the. have stripped branches, you know, which registers autumn which again is picked up with, with all those fallen golden leaves. And, and the stippling of sunlight in patches on the forest floor. Nicely rendered again visually in the game. Herman, Draws attention to the automatic process of cognitive mapping that takes place when we imagine a place based on a description. Imagine this description without the nice picture. How do we make sense of Tolkien's words? How does your mind process that verbal description, or setting? Well, Herman proposes that you actually engage in an automatic process of cognitive mapping. You situate yourself in relation to the described objects and you map it, internally. You cause the fused mental model that you construct when you read a narrative, storyworld, you model the description, and then you relate it to existing cognitive models that you have of phenomenon in your real world. You relate the description of Tolkien of the sun shining down through the trees to your real life experience of sunlit paths in a forest. We know it's fall in this picture from contextual cues, like half-stripped branches. So you form a mental model of Tolkien by fusing the description with your existing ideas of somewhere in the forest. Here's Herman's explanation of mental modeling. Stories trigger recipients, to establish a more or less direct or oblique relationship between the stories they are interpreting and the contexts in which they are interpreting them. >> Well, one question that I have is, if these mental models come from our lived experiences and what we've seen and where imagination comes in with what we're, what we're seeing when we're reading. >> You mean like a child who reads this who doesn't have a clear image of the forest A child who's lived in a city all of her life and doesn't have a clear image of it. Any response to that? >> Yeah, I think experience is definitely part of it, but though I think that not all that experience necessarily has to come from real life, if you've read other things that can inform something that you are reading now. I think that certainly helps, but your question makes me think of when I first read about King's Cross Station in the first Harry Potter book, I had never seen King's Cross so what I went to in my mind was actually Union Station in Washington, DC. >> That's great, and what happened when you saw the movie? Did it fit your mental model? >> Well unfortunately by the time I'd seen the movie, I, I had seen pictures of King's Cross Station, so... >> So you really- This is a great example because you have a complex layering of models drawn from your imagination. From descriptions in Harry Potter, and from photographs you have then seen in fan literature, and finally this, film maker's. >> Right. >> So I think that really helps it give a little depth to what Herman is saying. That you draw off whatever sources you have, whether it's real life experience, personal experience with forests, or just what you imagine a forest to look like. >> Herman goes on >> To explain, this prompts readers to relate two types of mental models. One that they've built up from cues in the text, the sunlit paths, the tunnel forest and the other based on their prior experience with the real world. Narratives ask readers to search for analogies between these two classes of mental models, the textual model and the real life model of the world. So, Killian, let's test this model of Herman's against fantasy literature. Now, how can it work in fantasy worlds, which are really supposed to be fairly imaginary? >> Right, yeah. It seems like it would present a problem. It seems like If the narrative departed too much from something that I were able to relate to, then the novel would cease to function appropriately for me. But it reminds me of the ways at in so many points in Tolkien, we get incredibly thick, topographical description. We're allowed to orient ourselves very, very specifically, almost as though we were reading.. a story of somebody's travels to the countryside, or something like that. and these are the things, for me, at least, help me to ground myself in what's happening, despite the fantastical side. >> And there's such a variety of topographical description. It's clear that Tolkien is in love with the imaginary landscape that he's drawing, the Shire. >> I think it's rural England, and English countryside. >> Yeah. And even the towns where he grew up. And it's a fantasy realm. But it's a fantasy realm that takes its reality, its particularity from modeling of, of those concrete worlds. [MUSIC]
