Narrative Renewal Theory :A Brief Introduction
Nobuhisa Katafuchi

BookWay

recipient conceives of the memory as a particular combination ofmental images abstracted from given events, character actions, andso forth. The combinations of separate mental images are indefinite
and mutable, but more often than not, they can be integrated into
sharply defined images that typify the narrative discourse and its
story sequence per se.

4. Story, Storyworld, and Mental Image
Let us summarize the points in developing a theory of narrative
renewal: Narrative renewal occurs as the transformation of astoryworld. If storyworlds are, as Marie-Laure Ryan appropriately
indicates, “totalities that encompass space, time, and individuatedexistents that undergo transformations as the result of events” (Bell2019: 63), the all-embracing “totality” of a storyworld should also
be evoked as a combination of narratively-related, representative
images that transcend genre or medium. With these points in mind, I
suggest that the representation of a storyworld is nothing less thanits mental images regarded as one that epitomizes and evokes theentire narrative. Only by being represented as a mental image, does
the storyworld have an ontological status in the recipient’s mind andcan always be simulated as if it were a real world comprising
specific scenes, characters and their actions, events, or settings. To
be more precise, the recipients mentally compress the story content
decoded from the narrative discourse into a combination (both
4. Story,55
Storyworld, and Mental Image55

recurrent and new) of representative events, characters, andthematically-important scenes with indispensable existents, all ofwhich enable them to summon the entire storyworld at any time. As
the storyworld is “an imagined totality that evolves according to theevents in the story” (Ryan 2016: 13), or that which constitutes theinnermost essence of a given narrative, the recipients’ constructionof it will directly or indirectly be influenced by the event orsequence of events they consider to be a “totality.”
To fully elucidate this continuous renewal process, then, wemust first examine the interaction occurring between the mental
image and the storyworld in the decoding and encoding processes.
The initial stage of narrative renewal is conceptualizing the
spatiotemporally ordered storyworld by engraving the overallnarrative in one’s memory, whether through an act of reading anovel, watching a film, or playing a video game. Ideally, thementally formulated image of the storyworld is all-encompassing,but due to an incomplete or failing memory, it can only be called up
in fragments. However, one cannot exhaustively visualize all thevariable images of a narrative. Not being able to remember theentire image, the recipient of the narrative must settle for trying torecall and reproduce only separate scenes or events; these aremanifested as mental images that are assumed to be representative
and totalizing.
The process of decoding/encoding is reversible, and just as the5656decoding process develops in accordance with their choice ofmental image(s) abstracted from the storyworld, the encoding
process begins by invoking the mental image that is stored in ourmemory and ends when the new narrative discourse is newly
enacted by the storyworld. The elements comprising the storyworld,
as far as the narrative experience is concerned, can be shared andappreciated by all kinds of recipients of a narrative, whether they areprofessional author-creators or not.
Although a narrative manifested in any medium theoreticallyhas only one holistic storyworld, it does not always create the samemental image(s) in different recipient’s minds. Since humanmemory is unreliable, out of sheer necessity, recipients have no
choice but to create a mental representation of a narrative byselecting individually some impressive scenes that they think play adominant role in shaping the core image of the totalized memory forthe narrative sequence. Juliet’s monologue on the balcony, “Romeo,
Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” and Hamlet’s soliloquy, “To be,
or not to be, that is the question,” are just two well-known
language-based examples among many. Alternatively, we can recall
the memorable scene of Huck and Jim drifting down the Mississippi
on a raft as the representative image of Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn. Thus created at the very core of the recipients’ understanding
in the process of their narrative experience, a mental image becomes
and functions as an easily available piece of information required
4. Story,57
Storyworld, and Mental Image57

for recalling the storyworld as virtually totalized, like certain
unforgettably imprinted scenes (Juliet’s monologue, Hamlet’s
soliloquy, or Huck and Jim’s floating on a raft) that leave such a
distinct impression that they can recapitulate the entire narrative, by
virtue of which the memory of its storyworld is always accessible.
Typically, it is the mental images regarded as recurring and thesame being handed down from preceding to derivative narratives
that make the process of renewal possible. It is not, however, all that
we have to address as the problems in narrative experience, foreverything that seems invariable does not change through therenewal process. On the contrary, it is possible that even entirely
new narrative sequences will appear. Then both mutability andimmutability are subsumed in the idea of narrative renewal.
Narrative renewal is not enacted without both old and reneweddiscourses being endured and even totally new stories being
created in their “palimpsestuous intertextuality,” to invoke Linda
Hutcheon’s phrasing again. These recipients can access the old text
even after the new one appears, and new possibilities present
themselves in an almost countless diversity of intertextual narrative
experiences.
Hence, the idea of a narrative matrix within which all thenarrative possibilities are subsumed. Such a new discourse, which
can be generally recognized as belonging to the same category ofstories, joins what could be called a matrix, an inclusive concept that58

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explains the entire process of continuous renewal. Every
conceivable narrative development can be said to be contained
within an all-inclusive matrix already. A matrix is an aggregate
formulated in our mind of all the narrative possibilities, which canbe shared and simulated by all the recipients/creators. While amental image conceived out of a narrative discourse represents theentirety of an event and a storyworld’s existents, themes andmessages, whether narratively important and reiterative or not, but
in extreme cases regardless of their narrative importance andsometimes even including the story sequence that deviates
considerably from the original, a narrative matrix is an ideal wholeformed by an infinite number of potential storyworlds that aresupposed to be known as variable mental images by the creators andrecipients alike, both of whom are equally active participants in theprocess of decoding and encoding. They are both on a more or lessequal footing and contribute to the formation and development of amatrix, reusing still extant story contents or presenting a newly
created story sequence. In one narrative matrix all the potential story
events are relativized, and it is supposed that anything can happen inits storyworld, aside from whether it is good or bad story sequence.
Even the thoroughly opposing story lines can coexist. The narrative
matrix of Moby Dick, for example, could include both the death andsurvival of Captain Ahab in its story possibilities. In almost all the
Moby Dick story variants, Ahab meets his death at the end of the
4. Story,59
Storyworld, and Mental Image

59

story, but in a rare instance he survives and even is united with his
sweetheart as in the 1926 silent film adaptation The Sea Beast andthe 1930 talking film version Moby Dick. In the case of The Scarlet
Letter, despite the fact that in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel Arthur
Dimmesdale finally perishes after his confession of the adultery, it isstill possible that he does not die but leaves the colony with Hester
Prynne and Pearl, as in the 1995 film adaptation. Let us take still
another example. The ending of West Side Story, in which Mariasurvives in spite of Tony’s death is another case of the narrative
matrix of Romeo and Juliet adding still another image of its possible
storyworld, where either one or both of the two lovers survive.
We can theoretically argue that when every recipient
experiences a narrative, he or she can draw from the narrative
matrix all the information of its possible storyworlds given by every
preceding or derivative narrative that is assumed to belong to thematrix. Even an original (ingenious and not derivative) narrative
discourse is formed with its own storyworld, since it is also moldedon a mental image (newly conceived or not) and renewed at thisstage of (re)creation. Therefore, the storyworlds of the old and the
new essentially overlap in various proportions and combinations,sharing a variety of narrative components, sometimes withsomething new added or something old deleted in accordance withthe mental image conceived by the individual narrative
recipient/creator. One typical example is Ernest Hemingway’s short60

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story, “The Killers,” and its two film adaptations: Robert Siodmak’s
1946 film, The Killers, develops its own story, but it is considered to
be a possible sequel to the ending of Hemingway’s source text,
which displays the solution to the mystery of how things resulted in
the murder of a man. Don Siegel’s 1964 film is not so much basedon Hemingway’s original as a remake of Siodmak’s film, but it
creates a new narrative possibility that the two killers play a role as
the active characters who dig up their victim’s past in a violent way.
We should also note that the 1964 version shares neither setting(time and place) nor story events with Hemingway’s source text andthe 1946 adaptation.
Let us take another example. In a more loosely inspired case of
Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story, some recipients undoubtedly
regard the storyworlds of the two narratives to be quite different,with no apparent renewal relationship at all. A renewed narrativethat would belong to the same matrix is actually created out of its
reorganized mental image. The balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet
conveys the pathos of the entire tragic love story. Of course, we may
recall other scenes as well that are associated with the details of
Romeo and Juliet’s life and death. However, many people may
remember the mental image of Juliet on the balcony as an iconic
scene and the predominantly representative event in the play’s
storyworld as it appears to condense the entire storyworld of theplay and its thematic concern as well. If we perceive that different
4. Story,61
Storyworld, and Mental Image

61

discourses, as in the case of Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story,
share the mental image that can be regarded as the same (forexample, the former’s balcony scene and the latter’s fire escapescene), then we can recognize that there is a renewal relationshipbetween them as the storyworld and its mental image(s) are shiftedfrom the previous text and transplanted to the next.
Thus, it may be safely inferred that when the storyworld isrenewed out of the old (in accordance with the transplanted mental
image) and a new discourse is added to the existing matrix, the samemental images traverse different discourses (and sometimes
different storyworlds). These recurring images could manage tocreate a narrative matrix, no matter how different and variable they
may be. One matrix can subsume all the narrative possibilities, fromthe most to the least probable story sequences, carrying thenarrative’s potential for renewing itself, making its storyworldcontinuously and almost infinitely variable. Major examples include,
among many others, four contemporary series: Harry Potter, Star
Wars, Sherlock Holmes, and the James Bond 007. Likewise, Wicked(both the novel and its musical adaptation) and the film Oz the Greatand Powerful are side stories or prequels to The Wonderful Wizardof Oz, both of which constitute a part of what could be called The
Wizard of Oz matrix, along with L. Frank Baum’s source text and its
classic 1939 film adaptation. The case of the 1964 film Mary
Poppins and the 2018 sequel film Mary Poppins Returns affords

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another example. Both of the films belong to the Mary Poppins
narrative matrix, into which are included their source texts, that is, P.
L. Travers’ Mary Poppins books.
It often happens that a mental image subsumes more than one
storyworld; not only does it contain preceding storyworlds, but it
also foresees and anticipates forthcoming ones not yet realized. A
new storyworld is contained in a pre-existing mental image by being
set into the narrative matrix as the complex network of a story that
already exists. Different mental images can yield different
storyworlds, and they implement different narrative renewals. Somenarratives encourage recipients not only to hold invariable images,
such as Hamlet’s soliloquy, but also to create completely different
images, such as the film adaptations of “The Killers.” A media
franchise like Star Wars presumably has some elements of astoryworld in common among its film series (as Ryan [2013:369-71] proposes in her comprehensible image of different
overlapping circles); however, each movie in the series also has anindividual storyworld. If the different storyworlds share the samemental image, the audience readily identifies them as belonging to
the same narrative matrix. The newly conceived storyworld would
undoubtedly make some change in the mental image(s) of the old,and yet something would remain identifiable.
To take an interesting example (also discussed at length in
Hutcheon [2013: 72-77]), in Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, the
4. Story,63
Storyworld, and Mental Image

63

author-narrator recounts that Captain Vere died in battle shortly
after Billy’s execution. However, in the novella’s opera adaptation,
the Captain somehow survives the subsequent battles and in his old
age reminisces about the events leading up to Billy’s last moment.
Captain Vere’s survival and the fact that he appears as a
retrospective focal character in the stage adaptation is not only a
new story element in Billy Budd’s narrative matrix, but it also
depicts an element in the reader’s mental image that could
potentially have been anticipated. It must be noted that Billy Budd’s
narrative matrix could afford both the possibilities of Vere’s survival
and of his death. The storyworld of Billy Budd’s opera adaptation isslightly different from that of Melville’s source text, but in spite ofthat difference it still belongs to the potentialities of the narrativethat can be subsumed under the same generic title. Even Melville,
the author of the source text, chose only one among manifold
narrative possibilities; he opted for the Captain’s death while theopera adaptation did the opposite. In this sense, the source text is not
an origin of the narrative but only a possible variation in thecontinuous process of reception and creation. Both the source text
and its adaptation share the same mental image, in this case,condensed in the climactic scene in which Billy gives Captain his
blessing: “God bless Captain Vere!” (in the source text), or “StarryVere, God bless you!” (in the opera adaptation). In either case Billy
inevitably dies, but that still offers no proof that there is no64

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possibility of his survival in the continuously renewed storyworldthat belongs to the narrative matrix of Billy Budd.
In our theoretical model, the construction of storyworlds and theworkings of a mental image play a crucial role in the continuous andtransfictional process of renewing a narrative. A mental image is avariable reference point where the storyworld keeps its concrete
identity and allows for the possibility of its almost unlimited
variations. While a mental image conceived out of a narrative
discourse represents the entirety of an event and a storyworld’s
existents, themes and messages, whether narratively important andreiterative or not, a narrative matrix is an ideal whole formed by an
infinite number of potential storyworlds that are supposed to be
known as variable mental images by the creators and recipients alike,
both of whom are equally active participants in the renewal process.
The decoding of the narrative discourse is this process by which thevariable images of the storyworld are mentally constructed. The
recipient decodes the narrative discourse into the totalized entity as
one possibility of the storyworld, which can only be recalled as amental image. The ensuing creative process of encoding a renewed
narrative discourse begins with the transformation of these mental
images into another storyworld. It can also be explained as being
analogous to the decoding process as all the narrative recipients are
possible creators (in so far as they keep the memory of the narrative
as the mental image of the storyworld).
4. Story,65
Storyworld, and Mental Image

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The process of reception and creation in narrative renewal canbe more clearly understood by focusing on transfictionality, that is,
the transference or re-formation of a storyworld throughout the
decoding and encoding processes. Lubomír Doležel introduced thethree ways in which a narrative world can be related to anotherfictional world: expansion, modification, and transposition(1998: 206-07). Marie-Laure Ryan adds “quotation” to Doležel’s
taxonomy (2013: 366-67). In “From Possible Worlds to Storyworlds:
On the Worldness of Narrative Representation,” Ryan also classifies
basic operations of transfictionality into five categories: extension,
modification, transposition, crossover, and embedding (Bell 2019:71). The mental image is a cognitive construct abstracted from andtransformed into the storyworld in the transfictional process ofnarrative renewal. If the mental image of a narrative can change
flexibly, from one recipient/creator to another, then it is nowonder that not only the components of the image that one
commonly shares but also the extension, contraction, digression,
misunderstanding and even contradiction of that process can be
included in the ontological concept of a storyworld, making it
potentially and illimitably variable. If we regard storyworlds as“intersubjective communication constructs based on a given narrative
representation” incorporating “both a complex understanding ofsituations and more abstract reconstructions of their spatial,
temporal, causal, and ontological relation” (Thon 2016: 54), then we66

66can certainly infer that ideal constructs of a storyworld or those of amental image obtained and transformed in the transfictional
decoding and encoding process, as noted above, are virtuallynonexistent. This is because the storyworld and its mental image are
aggregates of variable referential meanings that would coexist in anarrative matrix. Thus, in the continuous process of narrative
renewal, the storyworld makes and is made by the mental image.
As Marie-Laure Ryan demonstrates, “the storyworld is themeaning” (2014: 34), and this meaning can engrave its mental
image in our memory. We experience a narrative and transform it in
our memory into a storyworld. In order to understand the narrative,
we decode the discourse into story components such as events,
existents, and settings, and then we integrate or condense them intoa specific idea of an entire storyworld. When we produce our image,
we encode it into a renewed storyworld, out of which a new
narrative discourse is created. In this continuous decoding/encoding
process we make and remake the storyworlds through mental
images. As clearly shown in the case of Romeo and Juliet, a mental
image is most likely going to elicit more or less the same scene orsituation in the narrative (although the details may be transformed insome or the other way); however, this is not always the case. The
specific mental images in the renewed narrative do not always
appear as the dominant scenes in a constant and stereotypicalmanner. Indeed, some renewed narratives can feature different
4. Story,67
Storyworld, and Mental Image67

mental images that never appeared in the source text, such as in thetwo film adaptations of “The Killers.” In either case, thestoryworlds and mental images evoked by them are, almost without
exception, contained in the narrative matrix, and are theoreticallyshared by all those who engage themselves, intentionally or not, inexperiencing discourses and/or creating the matrix.
As narrative renewal extends almost continuously overmany periods and through different cultures, so the matrix
continues to become increasingly extensive and expansive. As it isencompassing, a mental image can yield different storyworlds,
which in turn are to be transformed into new narrative discourses.
There are cases in which the original and the renewed narratives
share their storyworlds to one degree or another. In those cases, thecombinations of variable and invariable storyworlds can explain theentire process of ever-changing narrative renewal. Figure 1 shows
the decoding/encoding process (denoted by the arrows pointing
down and up, respectively).
For the sake of convenience, it is shown that individual
storyworlds partially overlap each other, but there are some cases inwhich storyworlds belonging to the same narrative matrix neveroverlap, as in the case of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Baz
Luhrmann’s 1996 film adaptation, William Shakespeare’s Romeo +Juliet. Still, both of them can be considered to join the same

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narrative matrix

newdiscoursestoryworld

discourse

discoursestoryworld

discourse

new
discoursestoryworld

mental image(s)Figure 1: The process of decoding/encoding in its
entirety within a narrative matrix.

narrative matrix since they recognizably share the same kind of
mental image like the balcony scene where the two young lovers
meet (though the scene is transformed into the swimming pool in the
Capulet garden in the latter case) that stipulates they be called bythat title. A new discourse, such as an adaptation from a novel, is
technically encoded by the recipient/creator by referring to an
already existing storyworld of the preceding narrative within amatrix, or, that of the source text. However, the process ofconceiving storyworlds may vary among recipients, since they
4. Story,69
Storyworld, and Mental Image69

cannot grasp the entire storyworld of a narrative. If there is anadaptation that invites its audience to entertain an entirely different
storyworld from that of the source text, then the adapters’
inspiration and imagination may have stemmed from their own
mental images, which are stored in their minds and, if necessary, arereadily available, thus never persisting in a fixed, specificontological status of the storyworld. Accumulation of mental
images abstracted from the source text and of its derivative remakes
creates and varies the narrative matrix, the totality of which istheoretically shared by recipients and creators alike. There is thepossibility that the transformation of the storyworld will lead to thesegregation of these features to the point that a completely new
narrative matrix emerges. Even when a new discourse with astoryworld that differs widely from those of the older discourses canbe created by the recipient/creator, its mental image quite possibly
serves to bind together different storyworlds and (re)create thenarrative matrix.
The process of renewal is highly relevant to the formation of thenarrative matrix. One receives a narrative only through decoding its
discursive formation and understands the story content byreorganizing it into the entire memory of the storyworld (which isrepresented as a mental image), and the mental image can be thecreative source for the encoding process of the narrative renewal.
When the recipient/creator advances the process of narrative

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