RELATED TERMS: Narratology
The question underlying this post is the issue of what an adequate narratology would be for the practice of the design of narrative environments, an approach to designing that emphasises the (necessary) inter-relationships among people, narratives and environments.
In this context, the potential value of econarratology can be seen in three respects.
Firstly, it is an example of postclassical, contextualist narratology, which relates the formal, material and media elements of a narrative discourse to environmental, cultural and social systems to generate situated, meaning-creating interactions and interpretations; in short, people, narrative and environment are all brought into play in econarratology.
Secondly, it takes account of the cognitive dimensions of the narrative-environment interaction. This allows for the possibility of bringing into play the 4E cognition paradigm that the design of narrative environments acknowledges, in which cognition, learning, intelligence and interaction are seen to be embodied, extended, embedded and enactive.
Thirdly, in evoking the concept of storyworld, it enables a discussion of the inter-relationships among the (culturally) distinct domains of the lifeworld which the design of narrative environments designates as:
the imaginary self lifeworld, in which the culturally-mediated experience of material-corporeal individuality takes place;
the symbolic everyday lifeworld, in which the distinctions of particular cultural configurations are enacted and modified through the sociality of intercorporeality and intersubjectivity; and
the real ecological lifeworld that runs through the imaginary self and the symbolic everyday lifeworlds at macro and micro scales but whose actions nevertheless also exceed the ways in which those two lifeworld domains seek to represent, comprehend and control them. Needless to say, given this reflexive reticulation, the real ecological lifeworld is not a unitary whole but is realised through the enaction of complex fields of forces that are human, non-human and more-than-human at once.
What econarratology may assist with in the design of narrative environments is the development of emotional intelligence in responding to complex situations; and the development of ecological intelligence in considering the consequential dimensions of any interaction. Both of these forms of intelligence concern how one is constituted as an actant in any given situation and how one should respond as an actant with some sense of responsibility.
Econarratology
Narratology, the systematic study of narrative forms, was initially inspired in the 1960s by an analogy between the structures of natural languages and those of storytelling. Developments since the late 1960s, however, recognise that the formal aspects of narrative are never insulated from ideological assumptions and cultural contexts.This ’contextualist’ narratology, therefore, explores the interplay of formal strategies and cultural context (Nünning 2009). In this approach, the way one tells a story is always in dialogue with cultural norms, evaluations, and tensions. Contextualist approaches focus on how particular storytelling techniques, along with narrative’s subject matter, construct culturally situated meanings. Econarratology can be understood as a contribution to this contextualist narratology project (Caracciolo, 2025).
The term econarratology was coined by Erin James (2015: 242) in The Storyworld Accord, where she defines econarratology as,
“a mode of reading that combines ecocriticism’s interest in the relationship between literature and the physical environment and narratology’s focus on the literary structures and devices by which narratives are composed. Econarratology studies the storyworlds that readers immerse themselves in when they read narratives, the relationship between these worlds and the physical/actual world, and the potential of the reading process to raise awareness of different environmental imaginations and environmental experiences.”
James takes her central premise from the work of cognitive narrative theorists, who see reading as a process of immersion or transportation. Such theorists define a storyworld as a mental model of context and environment within which a narrative’s characters function. The storyworld highlights the world-making power of narrative texts. In this approach, narrative comprehension relies upon readers interpreting textual cues to make mental models of a text’s world and inhabiting those models emotionally.
To understand a narrative, given this approach, we must lose ourselves in the same environment and experiences as a narrative’s characters. James’ primary concern is the way in which the modelling and inhabitation of a storyworld demanded by narrative comprehension is an inherently environmental process, in which readers come to know what it is like to experience a space and time different from that of their more immediate reading environment.
Econarratology relates its analyses to other postclassical, contextualist approaches, such as rhetorical, feminist, postcolonial and decolonial narratologies.
James and Morel’s (2020) edited volume, Environment and narrative, explores econarratology as the consideration of material environments, their representations and narrative forms of understanding. Stories about the environment are treated as significantly influencing experiences of that environment, and vice versa.
Narratives are viewed as repositories for the values, political and ethical ideas and behaviours that determine how we perceive and interact with ecological habitats. In addition, narratives are positioned as important occasions for re-visiting and re-articulating those values, idea and behaviours. Changing humans’ interactions with the environment requires not only new stories but also a better understanding of existing stories long in circulation. Furthermore, the contributors to this volume contend that the environmental challenges of the early 21st century necessitate revisions to traditional models of narrative.
References
Caracciolo, M. (2025) Econarratology, in Live Handbook Environmental Humanities. Berlin, DE: J.B. Metzler. doi: 10.1007/978-3-662-70886-6_16-2.
James, E. (2015) The Storyworld accord: Econarratology and postcolonial narratives. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
James, E. and Morel, E. (eds) (2020) Environment and narrative: new directions in econarratology. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.
Nunning, A. F. (2009) Surveying contextualist and cultural narratologies: Towards an outline of approaches, concepts, and potentials, in Heinen, S. and Sommer, R. (eds) Narratology in the age of cross-disciplinary narrative research. Berlin, DE: De Gruyter, pp. 48–70.
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