Story Generator Algorithms

Birte Lönneker,  Jan Christoph Meister, Rolf Krause, Stefanie Thiedig

The formulation of generative Story Grammars was one of the principle aims of Structuralist Narratology from the mid-1960s onward. However, since Post-Structuralism and as a consequence of the general re-orientation of Narratology towards contextualist and cognitivist paradigms the idea of formulating universal Story Grammars is no longer considered feasable and in fact methodologically suspect.

By contrast, Story Grammars continue to play a vital role in Cognitive Science and AI-based attempts to model human 'Narrative Intelligence' (including Interactive Fiction research) . Story Grammars are often integrated into generative systems in the form of a Story Generator Algorithm (SGA) that communicates with other components. Our project wants to investigate the narratological relevance of such approaches, analysing and interpreting computational SGAs as test-beds for narratological theorems as well as a general heuristics for the investigation of formal features of narratives.

This project commenced in May 2004. We would like to invite interested researchers to contact us, in particular with a view to discussing potential interdisciplinary cooperation. For further information, please see http://www.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/story-generators

• Working bibliography