Skip to main content

Once upon a time ...

Image
By


Once upon a time a long time ago, the first story happened. Was it spoken? Was it drawn on the wall of a cave? Was it danced? Was it sang? Did it have rhythm? Was it memorable? Who was the witness and who was the storyteller? Only God knows and that’s only if there’s a God.
Millions of years later, not only were humans still sharing stories, some of these humans got curious about why we are drawn to stories, what deeper meanings lie in the forms we use to tell them, and how we could define the parts of these stories.
You want to know what’s wrong with these narratologists? They’re putting clashing definitions on what we call stories. Each of them is interested in some sub-genre of narrative study, and it shows. For the life of me, I can’t get the definitions straight. So, let’s check our handy-dandy notebook and see what we’ve got. Ah, yes.
“The narrative paradigm is a worldview of human communication,” says Walter Fisher.
“Narrative is the process of grammatical structuration within language and an object of rigorous, even scientific analysis,” says Martin McQuillan.
“Narrative is the representation of an event or a series of events,” says Hannah Porter Abbott.
It gets worse as far as clashing definitions, but the above are some of the clearest I’ve got in my notes so far. I keep trying to simplify every piece I read, but the more definitions I underline during my reading sessions, the more confused my annotations get. Is there an end to the definitions? Is there going to be a matching quiz with the definitions on one side and the terms on the other? I’m going to need some flashcards. This community of narratologists isn’t even a community – it’s just a grouping of academics looking to distinguish their own ideas about what narrative is and how we can tear it apart and put it back together. Just to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it makes the study of this field confusing.
Are we viewing stories—sorry, narrative—as behavior models? A way to pass down practical wisdom? A way to relay events that have happened? Something to enjoy before bed for no reason but amusement?
Narrative, as it’s been explained to me so far, is the structure of communication that parallels the cognitive processes in our human brains. It’s the way we construct a telling of anything – poems, plays, fictions, life stories, etc. And the study of it is complex and varied; each author that I’ve read so far has made it very clear to the reader what his or her premise is in the field, and that’s because the field is so varied across the board. They each create their own ways to study narrative and therefore throw definitions out like candy at a parade.
Well. I’m done. Maybe I’d understand the field better if it were laid out in narrative form.  

 edit: That being said, this link was one of the most helpful things I've read so far. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"You don't look like your dad!" Tales of Legal Adoption

By Anonymous
"You don't look like your dad. You must be the spitting image of your mother!" or "Your brothers look just like your dad! I bet you take after your momma." I heard these statements a lot growing up. And it's true. I don't look like my dad. And for a while, I didn't really look like my mom. I do now, but that isn't the point. You see, my dad adopted me when I was around six or seven years old. He had been a part of my life, for, well, all of it. When my mother and biological father (sometimes I refer to him as my sperm donor, because I think it's funny, but his name is Chris), got divorced, my dad, Kenny, married my mom resulting in a blended family of me, who was biologically my mom's, and my two brothers, who were biologically his. Suddenly I went from being the only child to being the middle child in a family dynamic that takes a lot of explaining to do. They say divorce and the things I supposedly went through in my early childhood...
Post a Comment
Read more

I'm adopted and I have trust issues. Here's why:

By
I grew up knowing that I was adopted. I’m a fair-skinned freckled brunette who never grew past 4’10” so I fit in photographs just fine with my brunette mother and blonde father who adopted me at birth. When I was little, they told me stories about how God had sent me to their arms, how they had chosen me, how special I was because I was adopted. The story of Moses was especially prominent, as was Tarzan. I grew up in middle America where everybody still goes to church on Sundays and Wednesdays like clockwork and trusts Disney to raise their children during TV time. My mother was (and still is with my daughter now) a firm believer in keeping children innocent as long as possible. She adores small children and works with them exclusively at the church where she directs the children’s choir and runs the after-school program. My father always had a nonchalant attitude towards these things. He wouldn’t go out of his way to introduce us to things that might be a tad inappropriate, but he...
Post a Comment
Read more

Speech in its essence is not neutral.

By
“All fiction can be profitably regarded as argument” The OED Online defines “profitably” as: “with advantage or benefit; usefully” ("profitably, adv."). “Profitably” caught me off guard, but when I consider it in this junction, I’m inclined to agree. I found this quote in a work by Ronald Sukenick called Narralogues: Truth in Fiction . Sukenick makes this argument after establishing that he finds “significance” through the narrative as opposed to the plot. When I originally read the word “profitably” I felt myself wanting to be in disagreement with the claim because of the monetary implications of “profit.” Then again, I found it hard to make a case for a work of fiction that didn’t stand to gain from profit. We all have writings (and maybe even written narratives) that we don’t plan on showing to the world, but it’s hard to imagine not being willing to exchange those writings when offered money. That’s not an ideal way of thinking, but we don’t live in an ideal world. ...
1 comment
Read more