ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I will examine the various possible relations between text, world, and story. The cases to be discussed include: many texts that build one world (i.e. transmedia storytelling); a text that presents a world that contains many stories; a text that describes many ontologically distinct worlds, each containing its own story; a text that tells a story that involves many ontologically different worlds, stacked upon one another; a text that tells a story whose ontology comprises different realities, existing side by side; and the creation of a storyworld out of another world, through the borrowing and manipulation of semiotic material that creates this other world. In conclusion, I will ask if “worldness” can be considered a scalar concept, realized to different extents in narrative texts, and what it takes for a narrative to evoke a world to the imagination.
