Books by Edward Branigan

Branigan effectively criticizes the communication model of narration, a task long overdue in Anglo-American circles. The book brings out the extent to which mainstream mimetic theories have relied upon the elastic notion of an invisible, idealized observer, a convenient spook whom critics can summon up whenever they desire to "e;naturalize"e; style. The book also makes distinctions among types of subjectivity; after this, we will have much more precise ways of tracing the fluctuations among a character's vision, dreams, wishes, and so forth. Branigan also explains the necessity of distinguishing levels of narration.

Branigan provides a comprehensive introduction to the basic concepts of narrative theory and its relation to film - and literary - analysis. He brings together theories from both linguistics and cognitive science, and applies them to the screen.

Through an engagement with the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and classical and contemporary theorists of film, this book re-assesses a century of film theory and the language and ways through which our conceptions of film have been made. It explores a different way of conceiving film as a language.