Narrative Proper Sample Clauses

Narrative Proper. Any notion of the narrative self is incomplete without (at least) a simple understanding of narrative proper. Proponents of the narrative self, most notably Ricoeur, devote significant time explicating the structure of narratives.4 Such a detailed account is not useful in the present context, but discussing a few key features of narrative certainly is. Unfortunately, like the self, there is no definitive account of what a narrative is. As Xxxx Xxxxx states, “Due to the interdisciplinary nature of Narrative Studies there is no definitive theory, no paradigmatic definition of what a narrative actually is” (Xxxxx, 2007, p. 1). Nonetheless, I briefly offer three key components of narrative. Xxxxx states that one of the most important aspects of narratives is the fact that they are inherently subjective. In other words, narratives have a point of view and 4 See Time and Narrative, Volumes I-­‐III (Ricoeur, 1984, 1985, 1988) and Oneself as Another (Ricoeur, 1992) involve the selection and sequencing of events, perceptions, thoughts, and so forth, from one particular perspective. These may be subconscious processes, especially on the level of the narrative self, but they occur nonetheless. As Xxxxx argues, “a narrative is a re- presentation of reality from a particular perspective” (Xxxxx, 2007, p. 1). Another prominent aspect of narrative is that the meaning of any given event cannot be understood without reference to a broader, temporally extended context. As Xxxxxxxxx states, “Perhaps the most salient feature of narrative form in general is that the individual incidents and episodes in a narrative take their meaning from the broader context of the story in which they occur” (Xxxxxxxxx, 1996, p. 96). Indeed, narratives consist of a number of particulars such as physical occurrences, mental events, happenings involving characters, and so forth. 5 But they come together as a narrative to become more than the sum of their parts. Meaning is generated in their interplay, what we simply call plot. Xxxxxx Xxxxxx adds that “these constituents do not, as it were, have a life or meaning of their own. Their meaning is given by their place in the overall configuration of the sequence as a whole – its plot or fabula” (Xxxxxx, 1991, pp. 43–44) . To say that a person’s life takes the form of narrative, therefore, is to say that “no single time-slice is fully intelligible – or even definable – outside the context of the life in which it occurs” (Xxxxxxxxx, 1996, p. 97). Import...