At once a distillation of the essential shape of a narrative and a prompt for producing that shape in the first place, situation is a useful term for both the interpretation and the production of narratives. Narrative situations articulate lively, high-stakes relationships among other formal elements, including plot, character, setting, narration, and the various forms that distribute story in time. For instance, situation helps us discern the difference between narratives where the setting feels custom-made for a character and those in which characters just happen to be there, overwhelmed by events and environments, whose personal attributes change nothing. Situation accounts for why some narratives flow easily, one event after another, while others languish at an impasse, generating little-to-no plot development, and often derive their impact from repetition alone. They elicit the responses of readers, and consumers of narratives in other media, by determining our general access to information, but they also prompt the development of special techniques such as free indirect discourse or camera zooms. Narrative situations, finally, support formal divisions, such as chapters or episodes, and may bear on our sense of beginnings and endings by constituting a premise, configuring climactic action, or defining our sense of closure.   


Whereas the identification of narrative situations for the interpretation or production of narratives relies upon some of narrative theory’s familiar tools such as the distinction between story and discourse (in any of the competing vocabularies), the concept also pushes past this known territory, demanding an integrative account of the structure and the experience of narratives. This seminar welcomes papers that investigate situation as an interpretive tool across various media as well as those that explore its status in narrative production, including those that generate accounts of structure and experience, creation and interpretation.