The episode : serial storytelling in television and the nineteenth-century novel
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The idea that contemporary television programs share some affinity with the nineteenth-century serial novel is popular and yet remarkably under-explored. This dissertation is an effort to take the issue of their association seriously, with a particular emphasis on taking apart the now-familiar assumption that television is like the novel. This is achieved by exploring serialization as a fundamentally narrative feature, which allows for an appreciation of the tensions inherent in all serial fiction and establishes a frame for productive comparisons between these two disparate bodies of text. The dissertation begins with a focus on the television episode as a formal device in an effort to understand its persistence in televisual narratives and its role as a narrative constraint. Where the novel's serial parts have no regular relationship with the narratives they contain and interrupt, the television episode is a foundational feature of television storytelling with no novelistic corollary. In the second and third chapters, the dissertation shifts to a consideration of the way serial structures in both television and the novel intersect with questions of genre and perpetuation, namely, by exploring concepts of open and closed seriality. The second chapter on open seriality examines works that enact seriality's promise of continuous narrative, and includes readings of Northern Exposure, Deadwood, Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters and works by Anthony Trollope. The third chapter, on closed seriality, investigates the serialized mystery through readings of The Moonstone, Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, and the television series Law & Order, Bones, and Lost. As the thesis explores genre and the concept of closed versus open serial storytelling in both of these chapters, it continues to follow the thread of episodic logic in various serial contexts. Finally, the dissertation's fourth chapter deals with what episodic structure erases, and what is lost when narrative is forced into segmented serial form. This argument connects the episode's opportunity for narrative amnesia with memory's diminished potency as a tool for character development and narrative change, and considers this idea in the context of Austen's Emma, as well as television series like Law & Order: SVU and Breaking Bad.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2014 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | VanArendonk, Kathryn |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of English. |
| Primary advisor | Moretti, Franco, 1950- |
| Thesis advisor | Moretti, Franco, 1950- |
| Thesis advisor | Bukatman, Scott, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | O'Sullivan, Sean, 1965- |
| Thesis advisor | Woloch, Alex, 1970- |
| Advisor | Bukatman, Scott, 1957- |
| Advisor | O'Sullivan, Sean, 1965- |
| Advisor | Woloch, Alex, 1970- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Kathryn VanArendonk. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of English. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2014. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2014 by Kathryn Jane VanArendonk
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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