1,11"-fC � .·· tf d Possible Worlds, Artificial lntelligence, and Narrative Theory Marie-Laure Ryan Indiana University B L 0 0 M 1NGT0 N & 1 NDI ANA p 0 LI s Press !. )·' -, , „ ; r...-- ,.:,_� · · ·.�•-l · t 1'""' C�r. !f-:>n \.. ''. �,,r, -·<=�.. 1 � ·-·I· • ,J - '< 1 •' . ,,_, • 1 y,r-L<i r_.....-: ')� ' - 1. 1 f·,\ T t --�t:""·"':.._ 11_. J'-K : ht.: Univ. Tübingen/Neuphil. Fak. A's • escl11ede11 l Dubletteau5'1 - '7 · L" i·(. _J.„ � ":\ /(. HzJDatum ··--·,......,_- © 1991 by Marie-Laure Ryan All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloglng-ln-Publication Data Ryan. Marie-Laure. date. Possible worlds, artificial intelligence, and narrative theory ! Marie-Laure Ryan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-253-35004-2 (alk. paper) 1. Fiction-Technique. 2. Possibility in literature. 3. Artificial intelligence. 4. Narration (Rhetoric) 5. Literature and semiotics. 1. Title. PN3355.R93 1991 808.3'014-dc20 91-6825 Contents Glossary vii lntroduction Part 1: The Fictional Game 1. Fictional Recentering 13 2. Possible Worlds and Accessibility Relations: A Semantic Typology of Fiction 31 3. Reconstructing th e Textual Universe: The Principle of Minimal Departure 48 4. Voices and Worlds 61 5. The Fiction Automaton 80 Part II: The Plotting of the Plot 6. The Modal Structure of Narrative Universes 109 7. The Dynamics of Plot: Goals, Actions, Plans, and Private Narratives 124 8. Virtuality and Tellability 148 9. Stacks, Frames, and Boundaries, or Narrative as Computer Language 175 10. The Formal Representation of Plot 201 11. The Heuristics of Automatie Story Generation 233 Conclusion 2 58 Notes 268 References 277 Index 285 , Glossary System of reality A set of distinct worlds. The system has a modal struc­ ture, and forms a modal system, if it comprises a central world surrounded by satellite worlds. The center of a modal system is its actual world, the satellites are alternative possible worlds. Textual universe The image of a system of reality projected by a text. The textual universe is a modal system if one of its worlds is designated as actual and opposed to the other worlds of the system. Semantic domain A concept slightly more general than textual universe. The set of concepts evoked by the text, whether or not these concepts form a system of reality (i.e., whether or not the text asserts facts and makes exis­ tential claims). AW The actual world, center of our system of reality. AW is the world where I am located. Absolutely speaking, there is only one AW. APW An alternative possible world in a modal system of reality. TRW Te xtual reference world. The world for which the text claims facts; the world in which the propositions asserted by the text are to be valued. TRW is the center of a system of reality comprising APWs. TAW Textual actual world. The image of TRW proposed by the text. The authority that determines the facts of TAW is the actual sender (author). TAPW Te xtual alternative possible world. An alternative possible world in a textual universe structured as a modal system. TAPWs are textually pre­ sented as mental constructs formed by the inhabitants of TAW. NAW Narratorial actual world. What the narrator presents as fact of TRW. Principles = identity < > nonidentity => accurate representation - not D necessity 0 possibility In nonfiction, TRW = AW In fiction, TRW < > AW In fiction, TAW => TRW In accurate nonfiction, TAW => TRW viii Glossary In accurate nonfiction, TAW => TRW In inaccurate nonfiction (lies and errors), - (TAW => TRW) In fiction told by reliable narrator, NAW = TAW In fiction told by unreliable narrator. - (NAW = TAW) lntroduction In the thinking of literary theorists, the concepts of narrative and of fiction are magnetically attracted to each other. This affinity is witnessed by the number of books using the phrase "narrative fiction" in their title, or one term in the title and the other in the subtitle. Does the longtime popularity of the composite category of "narrative fiction" stem from an inability to distinguish its components, or is it due to the tacit belief that narrativity and fictionality can only reach their full potential in conjunction with each ;­ other? Almost as powerful as the affinity between narrative and fiction is the mutual attraction exerted by the categories literary and fictional. A culture with no fiction but a literature appears as unlikely as a culture with fiction but no literature-no texts consumed forthe sake of pleasure. Many literary scholars implicitly regard fictionality as the trademark of literariness, and scrutinize the problem of fictional discourse in the hope of finding there a key to the understanding of literary communication (cf. Herrnstein Smith 1978, Martinez-Bonati 1981 a). But while it may be true that most of litera­ ture belongs to the category fiction, that the prototypical examples of fic­ tionality are narrative texts, and that the fullest variety of narrative techniques is displayed in fiction, the three fe atures literary, narrative, and fictional remain distinct, and do not presuppose each other. Every one, or nearly every one, of their combinations is represented in Western culture. Literary Narrative Fiction (l) (+ + +): Novels, short stories, drama, epic poetry. In the "low" literary domain: jokes, romances, thrillers. Literary Narrative Nonfiction (2) (+ + -): Works of autobiography and history acknowledged as literature: Rousseau's Confessions, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Michelet's Histoire de France. Literary Nonnarrative Fiction (3) (+ - +): Postmodemist antinarrative texts (regardless of the fact that they may be titled novels: the evolution of the genre has made the labe! "novel" separable from the feature of narrativ­ ity). Literary Nonnarrative Nonfiction (4) (+ - -): Collections of aphorisms, such as La Rochefoucauld's Maxims and Pascal's Pensees; or some classics of science or philosophy honored as literature, such as the writings of Freud and Rousseau. To either (3) or (4)-depending on the definition of fiction­ also belongs lyric poetry. 2 Possible Worlds, Artificial lntelligence, and Narrative Theory Nonliterary Narrative Fiction - (5) ( + +): Admittedly unusual, this cate­ gory is represented by the following text, published in the advertising sec­ tion of Time magazine (October 1987): Once upon a time there was a man named Rupelstiltskin who could spin straw into gold. An odd but lucrative occupation. One day he set out on a journey, lugging his spinning wheeL straw, and gold. Alas, Rumpelstilt­ skin tumbled down a hill. His gold tumbled, too-right into the mouth of an enchanted frog. Magically, the frog transformed into the Gold Bankard from First Interstate Bank, the nation's largest bank system. Nonliterary Narrative Nonfiction - (6) (- + ): News reports, works of his­ tory, narratives of personal experience, live play-by-play broadcasts of sports events. Nonliterary No nnarrative Fiction - (7) ( - +). This class is, together with the third, the hardest to illustrate-arguably because the features narrative and fictional present special affinities: a fiction may presuppose at least an embryo of narrativity. Potential candidates include the imaginary situations offered to children as mathematical problems: "A merchant buys fifty pairs of shoes at $10.6 7 a pair. He sells half of them at $17.96, one-tenth at $1 3.66. For how much does he need to seil the rest to make a 45% profit?" In elementary schools, however, these problems are known as "story-math." The philosophical dialogues of Plato would fit into this category if they had not been elevated by cultural tradition to literary status. Since they have not yet been canonized as literature, the dialogues between the imaginary couple Ralph and Wanda on human sexuality, published in the early eighties in Time magazine, provide what may be the best example of the category. (8) Nonliterary Nonnarrative Nonfiction (- - -): Advertisements (except for the case mentioned in [5]), recipes, interviews, textbooks, litcrary criti­ cism and theory (despite deconstructionist claims to the contrary), Jaws, organized debates, sermons, conducting business, saying hello and goodbye, exchanging opinions. While literary theorists have been traditionally reluctant to separate the issues of narrativity and fictionality, other disciplines have recently taken positive steps toward their distinction. Work in sociolinguistics (Labov), dis­ course analysis (Sacks, Polanyi), textual linguistics (van Dijk), folklore (Bau­ man, Young, Shuman), and cognitive psychology (Rumelhart, Mandler and Johnson) has paid attention to nonliterary nonfictional narrative, outlining the pragmatic principles governing its conversational use, and stressing its formal similarities to the narratives of literary fiction. Conversely, philoso­ phers working in the analytical tradition, such as Kripke, Searle, Lewis, Howell, Goodman, Wolterstorff, Woods, Parsons, and Walton have devoted their attention to the logic and semantics of fiction as an autonomous field of investigation. Following this trend, 1 propose to explore fictionality and narrativity as Introduction 3 distinct properties, and to address both issues from an interdisciplinary per­ spective-a perspective which may be called semiotic, since my approach is largely formalist, and my concern is signification in all kinds of texts, not just in literary ones. The first part of this book is devoted to a definition of fictionality, while the second investigates the semantics of narrativity. The common denominator of the