Overview

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.

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9781474454315

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"How wonderful to read a book dedicated to the communal value of non-adversarial thinking, kindness, care and prosocial impulses. Narrative Humanism offers new perspectives on the social functions of narratives and the emotional complexity of relationships, instilling the interpretation of film, television, music and media with a sense of wonderment.--Professor Jane Stadler, Hong Kong Baptist University The book's unique approach brings biological and cultural explanations of human behavior together around hermeneutics, ethics, and the social functions of narrative. [...] In enacting the ethical attention to cinema that it promotes, Narrative Humanism makes an original and welcome contribution to fi lm-philosophy.--Jane Stadler, University of Queensland ""Projections 15.2"""

Author Information

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).

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