Narrative Humanism: Kindness and Complexity in Fiction and Film

This book attempts to clarify the narrative conditions of humanism, asking how we can use stories to complicate our understanding of others, and questioning the ethics and efficacy of attempts to represent human social complexity in fiction.
With case studies of films like Parenthood (1989), American Beauty (1999), Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and The Kids Are All Right (2010), this original study synthesises leading discourses on media and cognition, evolutionary anthropology, literature and film analysis into a new theory of the storytelling instinct.

Author: Wyatt Moss-Wellington
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: 10/21/2019
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.20w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9781474454315

About the Author

Wyatt Moss-Wellington is Associate Professor in Media and Culture at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. He is the author of Cognitive Film and Media Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2021), Narrative Humanism: Kindness and Complexity in Fiction and Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2019) and co-editor with Kim Wilkins of ReFocus: The Films of Spike Jonze (Edinburgh University Press, 2019). Moss-Wellington is also a progressive folk multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter, and has released four studio albums: The Kinder We (2017), Sanitary Apocalypse (2014), Gen Y Irony Stole My Heart (2011) and The Supermarket and the Turncoat (2009).