Martin Kreiswirth said it best when he defined narrative as “Someone telling someone else that something happened”[1]. Narratives are how we talk about our lives. It can be something as simple as telling your neighbor what happened to you yesterday, to a best selling memoir. H. Porter Abbot went so far to say that narrative is “the distinct human trait”[2]. It is what separates humans and animals, our ability to communicate beyond the basic survival level. We have built an outlet for us to communicate and share our feelings in ways that are more complex than just to warn others of danger and to find food. Humans connect on a different level than other species because of our ability to narrate.
We have in fact created a new level of survival through narrative, and that is the social scene. Many aspects of survival in human life rely on social interactions. To get a job, we have to go through a job interview. To get into college, we must write a personal narrative essay. Everyone tells you getting a good job is about making connections and having contacts to get far. This all relies on our ability to construct personal narratives that make us seem appealing and interesting and prove that we have something to offer.
It is important to point out that in order for a story to be a narrative, it must include “non habitual physical events…It must communicate something meaningful”[3]. A narrative is a story where something out of the ordinary happens. It cannot just be a recount of an ordinary day. But it must be a story about how something changed. Abbot also agrees “something has to happen”[4].
The language the narrative is in is also important. As Annemarie Fischer points out “A narrative is the news transmission as well as poetic representation”[5]. How you tell a narrative affects how it comes across. With different wording, punctuation and pauses, the narrative comes off differently. When you are trying to tell a narrative for comedic effect versus emotional, you tell the story differently.
A narrative is a story. Our lives our filled with narratives, and it is the way humans communicate.
[1] Kreiswirth, Martin: Merely Telling Stories? Narrative and Knowledge in the Human Sciences. Poestics Today 21:2 (Summer 2000), p. 294.
[2] Abbott, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. 2cnd Ed. Cambridge University press. P. 1. Print.
[3] Ryan, Marie-Laure: Avatar of Story (Electronic Mediations, Volume 17). London, Minneapolis: University of Minnestoa Press 2006, p. 98. Print.
[4] Abbott, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. 2cnd Ed. Cambridge University press. P. 16. Print.
[5] Fischer, Annemarie. “Defining Narrative.” Global Media Narratives. Binghamton University. Binghamton, NY. 2/24/2011. Keynote.
You say a narrative must not be mundane. However, does that mean their is no such thing as a boring narrative? That seems a bit absurd, and many could view something mundane as interesting so categorizing would be difficult with the subjectivity of mundane. As Barthes has said, every function in a narrative has meaning, even if its just to point to its own uselessness[1]. For example, people talk to their friends about how boring their day was. What they say could be very boring, but it would be very useful in illustrating the lack of excitement in their day. If we cannot call this story telling a narrative what do we call it?
ReplyDelete[1]- Barthes, Roland Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative, New Literary History, Vol. 6, No. 2 On Narrative and Narratives (Winter 1975) The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. pg 242
Marie-Laure Ryan [1] and H. Porter Abbott mention in their definitions that a narrative must have something happen. Abbott mentions specifically that it must be “something out of the ordinary”[2]. I do not think that this does not include useless stories. A narrative can still be about something out of the ordinary that is of no use to me, but I agree with them that a narrative is not just a recounting of the same thing that happens all the time. However, I think it is very easy to turn something that may seem un-interesting into a narrative simply by changing the way you tell it. If you tell a story about how today was an especially boring day, than that is a narrative because that is not ordinary.
ReplyDeleteI think most importantly, a narrative cannot be something where nothing happens. Something has to happen, even if the something is not very interesting.
[1] Ryan, Marie-Laure: Avatar of Story (Electronic Mediations, Volume 17). London, Minneapolis: University of Minnestoa Press 2006, p. 98. Print.
[2] Abbott, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. 2cnd Ed. Cambridge University press. P. 16. Print.