Puzzling Stories

The Aesthetic Appeal of Cognitive Challenge in Film, Television and Literature

Steven Willemsen, Miklós Kiss (Herausgeber)

Buch | Softcover

408 Seiten

2024
Berghahn Books (Verlag)
978-1-80539-314-6 (ISBN)

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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	06.03.2024
Verlagsort	Oxford
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Film / TV
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Medienwissenschaft
ISBN-10	1-80539-314-6 / 1805393146
ISBN-13	978-1-80539-314-6 / 9781805393146
Zustand	Neuware