Cognitive Narratology
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Low-Who Tells the Story
Who Tells the Story?
Challenging Audiences through Performer Embodiment
by U-Wen Low
Religions 14.8 (2023)
Visualising a character in a narrative is a highly individual act; cognitive narratology suggests that individuals may construct character models depending on the information (frames) available to them. However, many of these frames are formed from knowledge defined by positivist historical criticism, meaning that construction tends to follow broadly similar patterns. Performing and therefore embodying a character shifts the role of interpretation from audience to performer; an audience engages with the nuances of each performer’s embodiment of a character in a shared experience of a temporal performance event. This shift of interpretive responsibility to the performer allows them to challenge audiences in ways that an author may not be able to. Embodiment of a character through performance will inevitably challenge readers’ cognitive constructions of the same character to different degrees—for example, gender, ethnicity, bearing, tone, or even action may differ—potentially creating dissonance for audiences. This dissonance may help interpreters to discover their own assumptions about the performed texts, in doing so creating new avenues for interpretation. Such is the promise of performance: by viewing embodied narratives, audiences are challenged to view alternative interpretations and subsequently reconcile differences between their constructions and those of the performers. -
Questioning the Questions
Questioning the Questions around Jesus’s Authority in Mark 11:27–33
A Performance Perspective
by Michael R. Whitenton
Religions 14.8 (2023)
The rise of performance criticism prompts questions about its relationship to other disciplines, most notably narrative criticism. While narrative critics traditionally focus solely on the textual elements within their cultural context, performance critics adopt a broader understanding of the term “text”, encompassing not only the cultural context but also performative aspects, such as the setting for public reading, the involvement of a skilled performer, and dynamics introduced by a diverse performance audience. This article demonstrates the distinctiveness of a performance-critical approach through a reappraisal of Mark 11:27–33, showing how such an approach yields different interpretive results when compared to traditional narrative criticism. More specifically, whereas traditional narrative readings generally conclude that Jesus is merely evading his interlocutors, I argue that a performance-critical approach suggests that many ancient listeners would have concluded that the lector-as-Jesus was insinuating, for those with ears to hear, that Jesus’s authority derives from God and was granted at his baptism. -
Wheatley-The Ritual Bridge
The Ritual Bridge
between Narrative and Performance in the Gospel of Mark
by Paul D. Wheatley
Religions 14:1104 (2023)
The abundance of ritual descriptions in the Gospel of Mark suggests a discourse about ritual between the narrator and early audiences of the Gospel. The prominence of the ritual of baptism at the beginning (Mark 1:9–11) and anointing at the end (16:1–8), and the recurrence of themes introduced in Jesus’s baptism at turning points in the Gospel (9:2–8; 10:38–39; 15:38–39) suggest broader ritual—and specifically baptismal—significance in the narrative. Recent changes helpfully differentiate narrative- and performance-critical interpretive approaches as text-oriented (narrative) and audience-oriented (performance), but these hermeneutical methods also work in concert. This article combines cognitive studies of narrative immersion with observations about the role of ritual in group identity formation and the impartation of religious traditions to analyze the narration of ritual acts in Mark. Giving attention to the use of internal focalization and description of bodily movements in ritual narrations, this article argues that depictions of rituals in Mark involve the audience in ways that deliver audience-oriented interpretations through text-oriented means. This analysis shows how Mark’s ritual narrations are conducive to evoking the audience’s experience of baptism, familiar to audience members as described in the undisputed Pauline epistles, the only descriptions of the rite that clearly antedate the composition of Mark. Publicly reading these narrated rituals creates an audience experience that neither requires the performance of the ritual in the context of the reading event nor an “acting out” of the ritual depicted in the narrative to create a participatory, communal experience of the text.