Reconfigured reality in scenarios of transformed identity,invasion and environmental threat: The diachronic exploration of recognition scenes in anglophone print and film narratives

Abstract

The paper presents key results in the diachronic analysis of recognition (Aristotle’s concept of anagnorisis) in works of Anglophone narrative fiction and film. Its focus is on the developing cognitive diversity in the representation of character responses during the cognitive-emotional crux which occurs at the heart of the recognition scene. The three forms covered are the recognition of close relationships (generally of kinship), recognition of hostile invaders, and recognition of the human threat to the environment. In contrast to previous research, the examples are taken from a wide range of realist and non-realist genres. The analysis of invasion narratives involves the recognition of enmity; this is mentioned by Aristotle but has received far less attention; the recognition of anthropogenic environmental threat, and its telling absence in some human responses – dysanagnorisis –, is largely a more recent form. The overall timespan of the examples ranges from the Renaissance to contemporary film. Notably, the recognition of enmity and of threat become a more common form in narratives of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with new examples in particular occurring in 1950s narratives. In the examples from the invasion narrative, key transformations in the representation of recognition in print versus film media, and in print-to-film adaptations, constitute an additional innovative focus of the paper. Overall, the representations of recognition studied are cognitively and emotionally diverse, with a marked growth in their ontological, emotional and cognitive complexity.