Abstract
“Let me tell you a story.” The proposed guidelines suggest that this phrase serveas the heuristic that readers supply at the beginning of any possible embeddednarrative to identify a shift in narrative frames or levels. (The difference between“frame” and “level,” although perhaps confusing in the history of narratology,does not seem like an important distinction at this stage of the project.) Thissimple phrase, the author suggests, can replace a field of narrative theory theyfeel would “simply confuse my student annotators.” However simple the phrasemight seem, however, it, in fact, conceals a number of key narratological issues:focalization, temporal indices, diction / register, person, fictional paratexts, duration,and, no doubt, others. The question for the guidelines is whether onecan leapfrog the particularity of these issues if students use the above phrase toannotate texts with XML tags and produce operational scripts that identify thenested narratives. As it currently stands, students seem capable of learning thebasic idea of nested narratives and tagging changes in narrative frames, but thereare no real results to confirm the project’s success, as the author reports they arenot yet able to confirm any inter-annotation agreement.
How to Cite:
McEnaney, T., (2020) “Annotating Narrative Levels: Review of Guideline No. 8”, Journal of Cultural Analytics 4(3). https://doi.org/10.22148/001c.11776 (external link, opens in new tab).