Narrative Humanism

Kindness and Complexity in Fiction and Film

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by Wyatt Moss-Wellington

Type: Studies
Subject: Sociology
Keywords: sociology
Publishing date: 2019
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 256 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-4744-5431-5

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Book Presentation:
Outlines an approach for reading fictive texts focussed upon the politics of human kindness
• Read the blog post An interview with Wyatt Moss-Wellington, author of ‘Narrative Humanism’ and co-editor of ‘ReFocus: The Films of Spike Jonze’
• Provides scholarly resources for evaluating the ethics, politics and psychology of our attempts to capture the complexity of other lives in narrative
• Offers a critique of post-Foucaultian literary and film theory, demonstrating how it is possible to make the conditions of human altruism (rather than its converse, power relations and exploitation) central to our analytical work
• Broadens the scope of cognitive media theory, reintegrating some of cognitive science’s formative disciplines
• Details both a "humanist hermeneutics", a practical guide to performing humanist readings of narrative texts and "social narratology", a taxonomy of the social functions of fiction
• Demonstrates the use of narrative humanism in two case studies at the level of genre theory (the suburban ensemble film), and close reading (Ron Howard’s 1989 film Parenthood)
• Distinguishes a narrative-based humanism from related philosophies, including Renaissance humanism and contemporary secular humanism

This book attempts to clarify the narrative conditions of humanism, asking how we can use stories to complicate our understanding of others, and questioning the ethics and efficacy of attempts to represent human social complexity in fiction.

With case studies of films like Parenthood (1989), American Beauty (1999), Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and The Kids Are All Right (2010), this original study synthesises leading discourses on media and cognition, evolutionary anthropology, literature and film analysis into a new theory of the storytelling instinct.

About the Author:
Wyatt Moss-Wellington is Associate Professor in Media and Culture at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. He is the author of Cognitive Film and Media Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2021), Narrative Humanism: Kindness and Complexity in Fiction and Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2019) and co-editor with Kim Wilkins of ReFocus: The Films of Spike Jonze (Edinburgh University Press, 2019). Moss-Wellington is also a progressive folk multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter, and has released four studio albums: The Kinder We (2017), Sanitary Apocalypse (2014), Gen Y Irony Stole My Heart (2011) and The Supermarket and the Turncoat (2009).

Press Reviews:
The book’s unique approach brings biological and cultural explanations of human behavior together around hermeneutics, ethics, and the social functions of narrative. [...] In enacting the ethical attention to cinema that it promotes, Narrative Humanism makes an original and welcome contribution to fi lm-philosophy.– Jane Stadler, University of Queensland, Projections 15.2

How wonderful to read a book dedicated to the communal value of non-adversarial thinking, kindness, care and prosocial impulses. Narrative Humanism offers new perspectives on the social functions of narratives and the emotional complexity of relationships, instilling the interpretation of film, television, music and media with a sense of wonderment.– Professor Jane Stadler, Hong Kong Baptist University

See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press

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