ABSTRACT
In search of a “transmedial narratology” (Ryan 2004), the study of narrative has turned its attention to media (Berger 1996; Huisman et al. 2005), forming part of a surge of research into multimodality. It has tended to focus upon digital media, such as hypertext. As a result, multimodality in the literary narratives of innovative print media has been neglected. This is regrettable since, even within mainstream publishing, the turn of the millennium has seen an increase in the inclusion of typography and illustration in fi ction. This chapter explores narrative understanding of multimodal novels, including consideration of recent discoveries from neuroscience. The examination of visual elements will be aided by visual perception and multimodal research. This theoretical merger enables an original approach to multimodal texts, both in its expansion of existing work in multimodal studies (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996, 2001; Baldry and Thibault 2006) through consideration of the cognitive dimension and in its application to literary texts.
