John Benjamins Publishing Company
Fact and fiction
Abstract
Building on an unified approach to literary and the everyday, written and oral (or otherwise performed) narrative, this chapter gets its bearings from a hermeneutic notion of narrative as a psychologically fundamental practice of human meaning construction, a practice that cuts across the putative divide between fiction and nonfiction. The argument put forward is that at the base of both literary and everyday processes of narrative meaning construction we find the same interpretive operations. These fundamental processes of human understanding and intersubjectivity are less shaped by epistemological or even ontological distinctions such as “fact” and “fiction” but first of all by a shared cultural canon of narrative conventions. To explore this argument in the contexts of narratological and philosophical discussions, I examine a slightly unusual narrative – unfolded in a letter by a person who considers suicide – in light of the narrative hermeneutics outlined in this chapter
Abstract
Building on an unified approach to literary and the everyday, written and oral (or otherwise performed) narrative, this chapter gets its bearings from a hermeneutic notion of narrative as a psychologically fundamental practice of human meaning construction, a practice that cuts across the putative divide between fiction and nonfiction. The argument put forward is that at the base of both literary and everyday processes of narrative meaning construction we find the same interpretive operations. These fundamental processes of human understanding and intersubjectivity are less shaped by epistemological or even ontological distinctions such as “fact” and “fiction” but first of all by a shared cultural canon of narrative conventions. To explore this argument in the contexts of narratological and philosophical discussions, I examine a slightly unusual narrative – unfolded in a letter by a person who considers suicide – in light of the narrative hermeneutics outlined in this chapter
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction, or another story of narrative 1
-
Exploring the narrative turns
- Travelling metaphors, transforming concepts 13
- Why narrative is here to stay 43
- To the narrative turn and back 63
- Travelling with narrative 83
- Philosophical underpinnings of the narrative turn in theory and fiction 93
-
Travelling between fiction and non-fiction
- Fact and fiction 121
- Broken or unnatural? 141
- Making sense in autobiography 163
- “Unnatural” narratives? 179
- Storytelling on the go 201
-
Travelling from body to story
- Towards an embodied theory of narrative and storytelling 227
- Fractured narratives 245
- Broken stories 265
-
Concluding reflections
- Twists and turns 287
- List of contributors 303
- Index 307
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction, or another story of narrative 1
-
Exploring the narrative turns
- Travelling metaphors, transforming concepts 13
- Why narrative is here to stay 43
- To the narrative turn and back 63
- Travelling with narrative 83
- Philosophical underpinnings of the narrative turn in theory and fiction 93
-
Travelling between fiction and non-fiction
- Fact and fiction 121
- Broken or unnatural? 141
- Making sense in autobiography 163
- “Unnatural” narratives? 179
- Storytelling on the go 201
-
Travelling from body to story
- Towards an embodied theory of narrative and storytelling 227
- Fractured narratives 245
- Broken stories 265
-
Concluding reflections
- Twists and turns 287
- List of contributors 303
- Index 307
