Światotwórstwo w perspektywie narratologicznej
World-Building in a Narratological Perspective

Author(s): Krzysztof M. Maj
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Summary/Abstract: The article aims at presenting a concise methodological proposal for interdisciplinaryresearch on world-building narratives in literary fiction, film, and video games.The presented methodology gathers up the most significant theses from theoreticaland philosophical schools important for the world-building theory, i.e.: semiology(cultural encyclopaedia as a fictional field of reference), cognitive narratology (DavidHerman’s notion of storyworld; Richard Saint-Gelais’ concepts of transfictionality andxenoencyclopedia), media studies (Janet Murray’s idea of encyclopedic capacity), ludology(Lisbeth Klastrup’s worldness) and transmedia research (Henry Jenkins’ transmediastorytelling). Supported by these concepts and ideas, the author follows up withhis own model presenting stages of world-building along with an exemplification offictional worlds in literature, film, and video games. The exemplification serves toprove two theses central to the whole argument: 1) a disjucture of storyworld anda singular diegetic storyline, and 2) an integrating function of the encyclopedia ofa given which creates boundary conditions for all the copossible plots. The article notonly presents theoretical and philosophical notions which have been seldom quotedin Polish humanities (like the ideas of Klastrup or Saint-Gelais), but also proves thevalidity of their adaptation to the studies focusing upon the fictional world-building.Such a methodological formula offers a counterproposition to those based on structuralistnomenclature, which – on the one hand – has never managed to keep upwith the analysis of the phenomenon of world-building, and – on the other – has hada paralyzing effect upon interdisciplinary approach as a result of structuralism’s paradigmaticexegesis of the presented world and its insistence on predefined, inter- ratherthan trans-medial, mechanisms of translating it into languages of different media.

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