Areas of Narratives or Narrative Genres

This chapter presents a tentative and large categorized system of narrative genres (i.e., a “narrative genre system”). It is related to the division of the objects or materials of research and analysis in the synthetic narrative generation study based on computational methods. Although, throughout the book, the author consciously uses Japanese narratives that include both universal narrative characteristics and local or cultural features, this narrative genre system is also constructed using Japanese narrative genres as concrete materials. As an overview, the narrative genre system includes five narrative categories: the narrative genre as a work in the narrow sense, the narrative genre as a work in the broad sense, the narrative genre as social and emergent phenomena, the narrative genres invading the real phenomena, the narrative genres as human physiological and psychological phenomena. In each explanation, after the corresponding narrative, genre category is defined and explained, and a concrete genre under the large genre category is treated for discussing the characteristics.