Unnarratable to the Narratable

The narratability (or visa, Disnarratability) always seemed to be a more conscious act. Possibly comparable to an artist understanding colors without an education, a musician understanding rhythms without reading music. Of course, not all of us can create art or have ears that understand music, but most of us can understand what makes good narratives and wasn't doesn't, we just don't always now how and why this is. The first word I have noticed repeatedly in both Prince's and Herman's works is 'interest'. One must find an interest in a particular narrative to be worthy of drawing attention. To go deeper, a narratable topic will have "meaningfulness" and/or "relevance" [1].


When starting this blog entry, the idea of narratable topics that are strictly entertainment (a comedian for example) might break this relationship up, but after debating, humans still find a connection of relevance with these comedians or other funny entertainment. If we didn't find this connection, the chances are we wouldn't laugh. There is a definite act of participation "which combines the impact of the text with the activity and the cultural embeddedness of the reader" [2]. There needs to be some relevance to draw interest.

Now, drawing back to the comedian example, one can also understand the unnarratable and how an unnarratable topic can still become narratable if given a different outlook. Comedians do this all the time when they bring up common unnarratable events and give them a very narratable or relevant situation, which again, people find a common with.

In conclusion, its hard for myself to really understand the possibility of a unnarratiable subject due to the vast ways a narrator can tell a story. The only way for true unnarratibility would to have absolutely no knowledge or relevance to the story, which becomes quite hard granted all of the ways people communicate (whether it be phone, TV, Internet, etc.) as of today.


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[1] Prince Gerald: “The Disnarrated”, Vol. 22, No. 1
(1988)

[2] Herman, Luc/Vervaeck, Bart: "Narrative Interest as Cultrual Negotiation", Vol. 17, No. 1 (2009)