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POPCULTURAL TROPE THEORY

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2020

Abstract

The article deals with the current state of narrative and narrativity in the situation of new media. After a short reflection on the transmediality of contemporary narrative (through the concept of media object of Axel Bruns) we comment on the changes of viewership in the "Netflix Era", and the situation of participatory media.

The core of the article describes a wiki website TVTropes and its concept of "trope". In the TVTropes environment, unaffected by academic literary theory (as far as it seems from the stated sources), a "trope" stands for a frequently recognized part of a story, and not a figure of speech, and thus is much closer to the object of E.

R. Curtius "topology".

In the end, we reflect on the possible consequences or benefits of the conceptual shift described.