The Economics of Surprise, Drama and Fiction Convention

Laurent Gauthier ()
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Laurent Gauthier: CAC-IXXI, Complex Systems Institute, ESPRI - Espace, Pratiques sociales et Images dans les mondes Grec et Romain - ArScAn - Archéologies et Sciences de l'Antiquité - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - UP8 - Université Paris 8 - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - MCC - Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: This paper proposes an economic account of literary and dramatic creation, and bridges the gap between quantitative models of literary works and game theory applications in the humanities, by focusing on outcomes in drama as devices for writers to produce works of optimal interest to their audience. Relying on psychological game theory we can represent the tension between the emotion of surprise and convention in literary work, and obtain certain theoretical optimal patterns. The model predicts that optimal storytelling leads to a departure from realism and convention, as function of preferences for creativity. Across multiple scenes, authors optimally allocate narrative importance to manage the audience's emotional payoff. We illustrate the framework using a dataset of decisions in a corpus of ancient Greek tragedies.

Keywords: Surprise; psychological game theory; games and literature (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Published in Journal of Cultural Economics, In press

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05533963

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