Narrative Comprehension and Film (Sightlines) Book

How does cinematic fiction render the ordinary world intelligible?

Narrative is one of the ways we organize and understand the world. It is found everywhere: not only in films and books, but also in everyday conversations and in the nonfictional discourses of journalists, historians, educators, psychologists, and others.

In Narrative Comprehension and Film, Edward Branigan presents a telling exploration of the basic concepts of narrative theory and its relation to film--and literary--analysis, bringing together theories from linguistics and cognitive science, and applying them to the screen. Individual analysis of classical narratives form the basis of a complex study of every aspect of filmic fiction, exploring, for example, subjectivity in Lady in the Lake, multiplicity in Letter from an Unknown Woman, postmodernism and documentary in Sans Soleil.

Through his exploration of film, Branigan expresses how the study of narrative should be viewed as a distinctive strategy for recognizing, isolating, and articulating the fundamental role which narrative plays in our response to the world as a whole.