Assembling a Storyworld: A Layered Analysis of Narrative Construction in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a large entertainment franchise that engages in
transmedia storytelling, or the spreading of narrative content over multiple media. This
implies both transfictionality (the sharing of story elements over multiple texts) and
transmediality (the spreading of texts over multiple media). As transmedial franchises
become increasingly prevalent, a thorough narratological analysis is needed in order to
understand the way in which their stories are told. This thesis attempts to develop a
method for describing the narrative structure of this transmedia storytelling by means of
Marie-Laure Ryan’s idea of the storyworld as a guiding framework. We begin by outlining
key theoretical definitions of transmediality and storyworlds as explained by Ryan in
order to establish a theoretical foundation. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is then
introduced as a solid case to explore these concepts. First, we focus on the notion of
transfictionality within several individual subfranchises of the MCU, diachronically
tracing how self-contained narratives gradually converge into a larger shared universe,
forcing the audience to constantly rethink the MCU’s storyworld. We analyse the impact
of this phenomenon by looking at the converging of the subfranchises’ ontologies in a
narrative content – such as film, television, theme parks, video games and comics – to
understand their role in building and complicating the storyworld. We conclude that
some formats are canonically more central than other formats, and that contradictions
can arise between these and the dominant cinematic narrative. Finally, we explore the
impact of the multiverse as a narrative device within the MCU, particularly its role in
integrating alternate storyworlds – including storyworlds from different media or
unrelated cinematic franchises. A conclusion presents a view of the MCU in which we
should distinguish the notion of the storyworld on several narrative levels, highlighting
the complexity of a narratological analysis in a transmedia context.
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