The idea to create pictorial narratives seems to have occurred long after humans learned to produce iconic images, that is, depictions based on visual similarity to external objects. In Scandinavia, e.g. in Gärde, Sweden or Stykket and Bøla, Norway, early Mesolithic images (e.g. rock carvings from before c.5000 BCE) often feature animals that are solitary or without suggestion of causal or narrative relations to other figures, although they sometimes are grouped by proximity or are superimposed on each other. Notable is also the almost complete absence of human figures. However, in subsequent Neolithic configurations (after c.5000 BCE), there are renderings of human agents involved in various forms of interaction with each other or with animals, often within distinguishable ‘scenes’ or compositions.

In this paper we outline the emergence of pictorial narratives in Scandinavian rock carvings. In particular, we focus on some of the first depictions of human agency as displayed in Nämforsen, Sweden (c.5000–1800 BCE). Further, we present an analysis of occurring human-animal relationships, interpretable as early attempts to create narrativizing images.

Traditional attempts to define the concept of "art" has frequently meant finding their core characteristics or necessary and jointly sufficient conditions. Especially mimetic and formalist theories have had numerous proponents, arguing for the aesthetic relevance of iconicity or of formal aspects, respectively. In this paper, some basic tenets and problems of these approaches, most notably their essentialist biases, will be discussed. I shall put forward a moderate defense of the aesthetic relevance of mimetic or iconic features in the visual arts. Hereby, also studies from experimental aesthetics will be considered.

In the humanities, narratology has become a growing field of interest in recent decades. Quite frequently, storytelling has been associated with verbal discourses, but, as this book argues, other media, such as the visual arts, often tell stories too. While among art historians the narrative aspects of visual art have constituted a prevalent focus of interest, systematic and theoretical treatments of narrative and temporal imagery have remained largely absent.

This book serves to bridge the gap between a language-oriented narratology and art history, examining some basic and regularly occurring narrative aspects of pictures from a cognitive and semiotic point of view. It will appeal to both scholars of narratology and undergraduate students.

Researchers have long discussed whether Scandinavian rock art reflects narratives. Their interpretations have frequently been based on inspections of rock art panels combined with knowledge from ethnographic and historical sources. Here, the authors adopt a more focused narratological approach that takes the concept of (visual) narrativity into consideration and draws on studies by literary analysts, cognitive psychologists, and semioticians. Images of spear use in the provinces of Bohuslän and Östergötland in Sweden, given their diversity and indexical qualities, are well-suited to such a study. They reveal different kinds of indexical relationships, i.e. how the spears direct attention to possible targets, arguably corresponding to action scripts well-known to Bronze Age communities. Many spear images may be regarded as mini-narratives and mnemonic devices intended to represent schematized action sequences. The authors suggest that concepts such as iconicity, indexical relationships, scripts, and mini-narratives could be fruitfully employed in research on Scandinavian rock art and beyond.

The theoretical debate on the nature of narrative has been mainly concerned with literary narratives, whereas forms of non-literary and especially pictorial narrativity have been somewhat neglected. In this paper, however, I shall discuss narrativity specifically with regard to pictorial objects in order to clarify how pictorial storytelling may be based on the activation of mentally stored action and scene schemas. Approaches from cognitive psychology, such as the work of Schank, Roger C. & Robert P. Abelson. 1977. Scripts, plans, goals and understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; Mandler, Jean Matter. 1984. Stories, scripts, and scenes: Aspects of schema theory. London/Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; Schank, Roger C. 1995. Tell me a story: Narrative and intelligence. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, suggest that cognition crucially depends on the storage and retrieval of action scripts or schemata, that is, narrative structures, which may occur at various levels of abstraction. These schemas incorporate generalized knowledge about event sequences, such as the order in which specific events will take place; causal, enabling, or conventionalized relations between these events, and what kind of events occur in certain action sequences. There also are scene schemas that are characterized by spatial rather than temporal relations. Further kinds of schemas seem also to play a decisive role. Drawing upon considerations from schema and script theory, I will focus on some concrete examples of pictorial narration, more specifically depictions of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, where narrative schema structures become involved and, indeed, the comprehensibility of the pictures as such presuppose mental script representations.

Scandinavian petroglyphs have given rise to vivid interpretations, often related to Old Norse religion and Indo-European mythology. However, we still do not know if, how or to what extent these images are really telling stories. In this paper, we shall analyse the ways in which Scandinavian northern and southern traditions (in Alta, Northern Norway and in Norrkoping, Middle Sweden, respectively) depict hunting narratives. While the northern tradition may render several phases and procedural aspects of the hunt, the southern one tends to be more focused on the killing itself, or the confrontational aspects of the hunt. A preliminary observation is that the scenes differ in ways that reflect not only different hunting traditions, but also imply different foci of interest. Put in another way, they emphasize different aspects of the hunting activity itself, of what is relevant, worth telling, or 'tellable'.

Within cognitive science, narratives are regarded as crucial and fundamental cognitive instruments or tools. As Roger Schank suggests, the identity of (sub-)cultures is to a considerable extent based upon the sharing of narrative structures (Schank. 1995. Tell me a story: Narrative and intelligence. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.). According to Schank, culturally shared stories, as do many other stories, occur frequently in highly abbreviated form, as “skeleton stories” or “gists.” Collective identities are conveyed in and between cultures not only through verbal discourse, but also by pictorial means. Many pictures and visual artworks have indeed been produced in order to establish and to consolidate a home-culture and to demarcate it from conceived extra-cultural counterparts.Some of my previous work on these lines has been concerned with demarcation efforts in visual media of “Jews” as extra-cultural, since the Middle Ages onwards, in the Third Reich’s iconography, as well as in modern, radicalized forms of anti-Semitic picturing in Arab media (Ranta. 2016. The (pictorial) construction of collective identities in the Third Reich. Language and Semiotic Studies 2(3). 107–124, Ranta. 2017. Master narratives and the (pictorial) construction of otherness: Anti-semitic images in the Third Reich and beyond. Contemporary Aesthetics 15. https://contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=765 (accessed 17 November 2019.). In building upon and extending this work, I shall focus in the current paper upon attempts of creating cultural and political cohesion by means of pictorial propaganda in post-war China from the early 1950’s onwards, as promoted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under the leadership by Mao Zedong. Some concrete pictorial examples indicating these attempts will be discussed from a narratological and cultural semiotic perspective.

In Europe, Scandinavia holds the largest concentration of rock art (i.e. petroglyphs), created c. 5000-first century BC, many of them showing figurative and seemingly narrative representations. In this paper, we will discuss possible narratological approaches applied to these images. We might reasonably distinguish between three levels of pictorial narrativity: representations of (i) single events, understood as the transition from one state of affairs to another, usually involving (groups of) agents interacting; (ii) stories, e.g. particular sequences of related events that are situated in the past and retold for e.g. ideological or religious purposes; and (iii) by implication, master-narratives deeply embedded in a culture, which provide and consolidate cosmological explanations and social structures. Some concrete examples of petroglyphs will be presented and analysed from narratological and iconographical perspectives. We will as a point of departure focus on (i), i.e. single events, though we shall also further consider the possibility of narrative interpretations according to (ii) and (iii).