Showing papers on "Narratology published in 2008"

Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness

Abstract: NARRATIVE MEDICINE: HONORING THE STORIES OF ILLNESS Rita Charon, MD, PhD New York: Oxford University Press, 2006, 288 pp., $39.95 (hardcover). The good physician knows his patients through and through, and his knowledge is dearly bought. Time, sympathy and understanding must be lavishly dispensed, but the reward is to be found in that personal bond which forms the greatest satisfaction of the practice of medicine. One of the essential qualities of the physician is interest in humanity, for the secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient. (Francis W. Peabody, 1927, "The Care of the Patient," Journal of the American Medical Association, 88, 877-882) I listen not only for the content of his narrative, but for its form-its temporal course, its images, its associated subplots, its silences, where he chooses to begin in telling of himself. (Rita Charon, 2004, "Narrative and Medicine," New England Journal of Medicine, 350, 862-864) Rita Charon is a highly experienced physician internist with a PhD in English. In this book, she combines these two demanding intellectual disciplines to define a new field, narrative medicine. Most of the material in the 288 pages of this work constitutes a veritable course in narrative theory. Casual readers may be overwhelmed by the subject matter unless they are able to sustain the required intense concentration upon a text that is uncompromising in its demands. It requires sustained focus to grasp the critical points. Yes, it's worth the effort. NARRATIVE MEDICINE Narrative medicine is most simply defined and understood through Charon's point that narrative knowledge is distinguished from scientific knowledge. Diagnostic efforts in this field therefore must join "2 contradictory impulses at once." These are to observe the defining, perhaps unusual, characteristics of the patient's disorder and also at the same moment to categorize this information to make it "readable," or useful. A symptom or disease is indeed an event befalling a character, sometimes caused by something identifiable, within a specified time and setting that has to be told by one to another from a particular point of view. (p. 41) The central recognition of narrative medicine is "the power of language in illness and health" (p. 91). This recognition allows us to meld "the instrumental and the reflective" in our work and as well in the lives of our patients; and to do so demands "new narrative forms . . . to contain, reflect and discover these perceptions." If, indeed, increasing doctors' skills to represent that which is seen and heard contributes to more effective affiliations between doctor and patient, there is an imperative to put these narrative practices into routine use. (p. 191) The patient's history must be received, not taken. By writing down the patient's narrative ("representing" it), we learn to comprehend it. We can see it, grasp it, understand it from all sides because it has been "formed." NARRATIVE THEORY AND PRACTICE Charon's explication of narrative theory is offered in all its complexity, and its precise language. The average physician reader (if I may so describe myself ) must pay full attention, remain alert at all times, and be prepared to suffer in order to gather the rewards of studying and comprehending this work. The author's intention is to define a field-that of narrative medicine-with the purpose of infusing medicine with narrative competence. A medicine practiced with narrative competence will more ably recognize patients and diseases, convey knowledge and regard, join humbly with colleagues, and accompany patients and their families through the ordeals of illness. These capacities will lead to more humane, more ethical, and perhaps more effective care. (p. vii, preface) One may well ask, how does this relate to the actuality of patient care? …

Posthuman Metamorphosis: Narrative and Systems

Abstract: From Dr. Moreau's Beast People to David Cronenberg's Brundlefly, Stanislaw Lem's robot constructors in the Cyberiad to Octavia Butler's human/alien constructs in the Xenogenesis trilogy, Posthuman Metamorphosis examines modern and postmodern stories of corporeal transformation through interlocking frames of posthumanism, narratology, and second-order systems theory. New media generate new metamorphs.New stories have emerged from cybernetic displacements of life, sensation, or intelligence from human beings to machines. But beyond the vogue for the cyborg and the cybernetic mash-up of the organic and the mechanical, Posthuman Metamorphosis develops neocybernetic systems theories illuminating alternative narratives that elicit autopoietic and symbiotic visions of the posthuman.Systems theory also transforms our modes of narrative cognition. Regarding narrative in the light of the autopoietic systems it brings into play, neocybernetics brings narrative theory into constructive relation with the systemic operations of observation, communication, and paradox.Posthuman Metamorphosis draws on Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Niklas Luhmann, Cary Wolfe, Mieke Bal, Katherine Hayles, Friedrich Kittler, and Lynn Margulis to read narratives of bodily metamorphosis as allegories of the contingencies of systems. Tracing the posthuman intuitions of both pre- and post-cybernetic metamorphs, it demonstrates the viability of second-order systems theories for narrative theory, media theory, cultural science studies, and literary criticism.

Elemente der Narratologie

Abstract: This book is a standard work for modern narrative theory. It is a translation and expansion of the Russian work "Narratologija" (Moscow 2003) and presents a comprehensive foundation for narratology. The author explains and discusses in detail problems of communication structure and instances, narrative perspective, the relationship between narrator's text and person's text, and the narrativity of literary texts and the texts as events. The focus is formed by the constitutive structures of fictional narrative texts. The book postulates a theory of narration and analyses central narratological categories such as fiction, mimesis, author, reader, narrator, narrative perspective, text, story, narrative time etc. against the background of the history of narrative research. The result is a fundamental definition of the constitutive characteristics of narrative texts which provides a terminological and theoretical system of reference for future research in narrative theory. A detailed bibliography and glossary of narratological terms make this book a compendium of narrative theory which is of relevance for scholars and students of all literary disciplines. In addition, the book develops a new methodological basis for future researchers.

Meaning in action: constructions, narratives, and representations

Abstract: The Social Turn in the Science of Human Action T. Sugiman, K.J. Gergen, W. Wagner, and Y. Yamada Part I: The Power of Meaning 1 Refl ections on the Diversity of Knowledge: Power and Dialogue in Representational Fields S. Jovchelovitch 2 Discourse and Representation in the Construction of Witchcraft W. Wagner, A. Mecha, and M. do R. Carvalho 3 Culture, Psychotherapy, and the Diasporic Self as Transitoric Identity: A Reply to Social Constructionist and Postmodern Concepts of Narrative Psychotherapy B. Zielke and J. Straub 4 Generative Inquiry in Therapy: From Problems to Creativity D.F. Schnitman 5 Constructing Trauma and Its Treatment: Knowledge, Power and Resistance C. Quosh and K.J. Gergen Part II: Constructing Meaning in Everyday Life 6 Moralities We Live by: Moral Focusing in the Context of Technological Change N. Kronberger 7 A Theory of Construction of Norm and Meaning:Osawa's Theory of Body T. Sugiman 8 The Transcendental Nature of Norms: Infants in Residential Nurseries and Child Adoption A. Rakugi 9 Using Social Knowledge: A Case Study of a Diarist's Meaning Making During World War II T. Zittoun, A. Gillespie, F. Cornish, and E.L. Aveling Part III: Narrative and Dialogue 10 Twice-Told-Tales: Small Story Analysis and the Process of Identity Formation M. Bamberg 11 Human/Nature Narratives and Popular Films: Big, Bad, Bold, Benefi cent, Bountiful, Beautiful and Bereft M. Gergen 12 Opposite and Coexistent Dialogues: Repeated Voices and the Side-by-Side Position of Self and Other Y. Yamada 13 Narrative Mode of Thought in Disaster Damage Reduction: A Crossroad for Narrative and Gaming Approaches K. Yamori 14 A Dialogical Perspective of Social Representations of Responsibility I. Markova Part IV:Action 15 The Social and the Cultural: Where do They Meet? J. Valsiner 16 Moral Responsibility and Social Fiction T. Kozakai 17 Social Psychology and Literature: Toward Possible Correspondence A. Contarello 18 Historical Confl ict and Resolution between Japan and China:Developing and Applying a Narrative Theory of History and Identity J.H. Liu and T. Atsumi Subject Index

Beginning to Think about Narrative in Poetry

Abstract: My title is frankly presumptuous. To imply that reflection on narrative in poetry begins here and now, with this essay, is to dismiss out of hand a huge body of precedent. Narrative theorists have been thinking deeply about poetic narratives since ancient times. Arguably, there would be no tradition of systematic reflection on narrative at all, at least not in the West, without the Homeric poems, which, from Plato on down to Genette and Sternberg and beyond, have continuously served as touchstones of narrative theory. Many important theoretical developments have hinged on analyses of poetic narratives; for instance, it would be hard to imagine Bakhtin finding his way to a theory of discourse in the novel without the example of Pushkin's Onegin. Nevertheless, presumptuous though it may be, my title does draw attention to a blind spot in contemporary narrative theory. We need to begin thinking about narrative in poetry-or perhaps to resume thinking about it-because we have not been doing so very much lately, and because, whenever we have done so, we have rarely thought about what differentiates narrative in poetry from narrative in other genres or media, namely its poetry component. Contemporary narrative theory is almost silent about poetry. In many classic contemporary monographs on narrative theory, in specialist journals such as the one you are now reading, at scholarly meetings such as the annual conference of the International Society for the Study of Narrative, poetry is conspicuous by its near-absence. Even the indispensable poems, the ones that narrative theory seems unable to do without, tend to be treated as de facto prose fictions; the poetry drops out of the

Narrative Theory and the Intentional Stance

Abstract: Drawing on treatments of the problem of intentionality in fields encompassed by the umbrella discipline of cognitive science, including language theory, psychology, and the philosophy of mind, this paper explores issues underlying recent debates about the role of intentions in narrative contexts To avoid entering the debate on the terms set by antiintentionalists, my analysis shifts the focus away from questions about the boundary for legitimate ascriptions of communicative intention, the tipping-point where those ascriptions become illicit projections of readerly intuitions onto an imagined authorial consciousness Instead, I propose a two-part strategy for examining how storytelling practices are bound up with inferences about intention The first part uses Hemingway's 1927 short story "Hills Like White Elephants" to argue that narrative interpretation requires adopting the heuristic strategy that Daniel Dennett has characterized as "the intentional stance" In other words, it makes sense to assume that stories like Hemingway's are told for particular reasons, in the service of communicative goals about which interpreters are justified in framing at least provisional hypotheses This first part of my analysis is tantamount to grounding stories in intentional systems The second part, which draws on work on folk psychology (and research in the philosophy of mind more generally), describes narrative as a means by which humans learn to take up the intentional stance in the first place, and later practice using it in the safe zone afforded by storyworlds This part of my analysis involves grounding intentional systems in stories Here I argue that narrative constitutes in its own right a discipline for reading for intentions, a primordial basis for making the ascriptions of intentionality that lie at the heart of folk psychology, or everyday reasoning concerning one's own and others' minds

Fiktionales Erzählen. Zur Theorie der literarischen Fiktion als Make-Believe

Abstract: The aim of the study is to develop an integrative theoretical model of fictional narrative. The make-believe theory of Kendall L. Walton, which explains fiction as a family resemblance of all representational arts, is adopted in order to explain the fictionality of fictional narrative. In the first part of the study, Kendall Walton’s make-believe theory is critically examined. In part two, major issues of theories of fiction are discussed, such as the relation of fiction to reality and truth. The adopted make- believe model is contrasted with alternative theories of fiction, both for theories of fiction in representational arts as well as theories dealing specifically with fictionality in narrative literature. In part three, an integrative theoretical model of fictional narrative is proposed. Fictional narrative is defined by making it at least implicitly fictionally true that it is narrated or mediated, even in cases where no teller-figure can be traced at the surface level of the text. The model is explained as ‘mimesis of narrating’, since it is not the mimesis of any specific world or reality that is the prevailing characteristic of fictional narrative, but rather the mimesis of the act of narrating. In addition, several potentially fictionality-specific narratological categories are examined. The study shows that unreliable narration, metalepsis, metanarration and mise en abyme are narratological categories which can appear in both fictional and non-fictional narratives and can therefore not be regarded as fiction- specific devices. The only fiction-specific category that was examined is metafiction.

How Do Stories Convince Us? Notes Towards A Rhetoric of Narrative

Abstract: This essay posits the conceptual rudiments of "rhetoric of narrative." Approaching contemporary narrative theory according to the classical trivium, the essay explores what and how stories mean and argue. It focuses on the relevance and value of the rhetorical tradition for illuminating distinctive features of a "rhetoric of narrative," showing how a "rhetoric" of narrative builds upon a "grammar" and a "logic" of narrative. Ultimately the essay posits that narratives can be positioned at some point along a continuum represented by poles roughly characterized as "aesthetic" and "ideological," with propagandistic argument lying at the latter extreme. The chief literary example for applying the conceptual distinctions emerging from our investigations is George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Theory of Mind and Fictions of Embodied Transparency

Abstract: ests include eighteenth-century British literature, narrative theory, and cognitive cultural studies. She is the author of Bastards and Foundlings: Illegitimacy in Eighteenth-Century England; Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel, and Strange Concepts and the Stories They Make Possible; co-editor (with Jocelyn Harris) of Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Samuel Richardson, and editor of Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies.

On Conversational Narrative

Abstract: This is a review essay on narrative phenomena in conversation, structured as a commentary and critique of Neal Norrick's book, Conversational Narrative (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2000). Written in Spanish.

Narrative disclosure of intellectual capital: A “structurational” analysis

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the manner and impact of intellectual capital (IC) disclosure. To frame the discussion, elements of Giddens' “structuration” theory and narrative theory are used to analyse change from within an organisation.Design/methodology/approach – Using a case study approach, this paper explores the impact of the narrative disclosure of IC by an Australian public sector organisation, the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Lands (Lands), which is the first Australian government organisation to externally disclose IC.Findings – By taking a structuralist approach to analysing the narrative disclosure of IC this paper moved beyond attempting to quantify or identify the wealth created by IC, and thus account for IC. By investigating the narrative disclosure of IC, initially in the form of the IC statement as a supplement to the annual report, it was shown how at Lands the use of narrative became routinized in the activities of management. Thus narrative was no longe...

Character Animation and the Embodied Mind—Brain

Abstract: This interdisciplinary investigation of aspects of 3D character animation synthesizes relevant research findings from diverse perspectives, including neuroscience, narratology, robotics, anthropolo...

Cheap Plot Tricks, Plot Holes, and Narrative Design

Abstract: In narrative, plot exists on two levels: the plotting of the author, who creates the storyline; and the plotting of the characters, who set goals, devise plans, schemes and conspiracies, and try to arrange events to their advantage. The plotting of both author and characters is meant to exercise control: for the author, control over the reader, who must undergo a certain experience; for the characters, control over other char- acters and over the randomness of life. But sometimes the goals of the author are at odds with the goals of characters. The author needs to make the characters take par- ticular actions to produce a certain effect on the reader, such as intense suspense, cu- riosity, or emotional involvement; but acting toward this situation defies narrative logic, because is not in the best interest of the characters, or not in line with their per- sonality. In this article I propose to investigate two types of aesthetically deficient plot twists that arise from this conflict between author and character goals. One in- volves an active intervention by the author, an attempt to fix the problem through hackneyed devices; I call this "cheap plot tricks" (henceforth CPT). The other results from ignoring the problem, or covering it up, a strategy (or omission) that leads to what is known among film writers as "plot holes" (henceforth PH). Through this em- phasis on the kind of events that makes the sophisticated reader groan, I will be breaking away from the almost exclusively descriptive tradition of both classical and postclassical narratology, and I will adopt an evaluative stance closer to the prescrip- tive spirit of Aristotle's Poetics.

Narrative identity: Ricoeur and early childhood education

Abstract: The thesis argues that who we are, what we aspire to, and how we enact social and cultural practices are a result of the way we narrate stories about ourselves as both individuals and members of communities. The question ???Who am I???? is frequently answered with reference to what is important to us: our commitments and what we determine as good, valuable and right. Our identity is thus inextricably woven into our understanding of life as an unfolding story, bound by an ethical commitment to what we value. In this way, understandings of narrative and identity become part of the social and cultural context of education, drawing upon complex relationships between individual and community. It is through narrative that we construct truth about ourselves in relation to others. The central concern of the thesis is the interplay between the ???capable??? child subject and various readings of texts that form the educational landscape in Aotearoa New Zealand: in curriculum documents with their emphasis on relationships, reciprocity, community, culture and language; and in policy documents with their emphasis on economic rationality. The thesis examines some important narratives that emerge from readings of these curriculum and policy documents, and the impact of those narratives on identity formation in early childhood education. Examined in turn are a liberal narrative, an economic narrative and a social narrative. Each of these narratives emphasises particular discourses and rationalities within education. The thesis finds these narratives inadequate to explain understandings of the self of early childhood education. The thesis argues that Ricoeur???s hermeneutical approach enables a range of narrative possibilities for early childhood education. The use of Ricoeur???s narrative theory in the thesis is twofold: a methodological approach for the study, and a critical exploration of the formation of ???narrative identity??? (for both the individual and the group) through an examination of selected narratives. The thesis responds to the tensions of these narratives through Ricoeur???s understandings of ???intersubjectivity??? and ???just institutions??? and provides educators with an ethical framework by promoting Ricoeur???s understandings of the ???good life??? and a ???capable subject???.

Process and outcome of narrative therapy for major depressive disorder in adults : narrative reflexivity, working alliance and improved symptom and inter-personal outcomes

Abstract: The inter-subjective and dialogical nature of narrative therapy, as commonly practiced, remains unarticulated. Further, there currently exists no rigorous empirical research investigating the process or outcome of narrative therapy. The research aim, to investigate the process and outcome of narrative therapy, comprised theoretical and empirical objectives. The first objective was to articulate a theoretical synthesis of narrative theory, research and practice. The process of narrative reflexivity was identified as a theoretical construct linking narrative theory with narrative research and practice. The second objective was to substantiate this synthesis empirically by examining narrative therapy processes, specifically narrative reflexivity and the therapeutic alliance, and their relation to therapy outcomes. The third objective was to support the proposed synthesis of theory, research and practice and provide quantitative evidence for the utility of narrative therapy, by evaluating depressive symptom and inter-personal relatedness outcomes through analyses of statistical significance, clinical significance and benchmarking. Founded in theories of self, language and narrative (James, 1890; Bruner, 1986; Gergen, 1991; Hollway, 2006; Vygotsky, 1934/ 1987), narrative therapy was conceptualized as involving dialogical and intra-personal processes. Narrative therapists generally apply a story metaphor and commonly focus on the inter-personal field (White, 2007). This thesis recognised the storied and inter-personal nature of narrative therapy, but proposed this does not represent narrative therapy in its entirety. The notion of story connotes monological processes, inconsistent with the conversations of narrative practice, and neglect of intra-personal dimensions is inconsistent with narrative notions of inter-subjectivity. This thesis proposed an integration of dialogical narrative theory (Cooper, 2003; Hermans & Kempen, 1993; Lysaker & Lysaker, 2006) and narrative research (Angus, Levitt, & Hardtke, 1999) provides a model for understanding narrative therapy (White, 2007) as involving the inter-subjective and dialogical process of narrative reflexivity. During the process of narrative reflexivity, a person engages in dialogue with his or her own self and others as extensions of self, interpreting experience from diverse perspectives in the context of personal aspects, such as beliefs, values and intentions that give meaning to experience, to achieve a rich narrative and a sense of well-being. To support this theoretical synthesis, a process-outcome trial evaluated eight-sessions of narrative therapy for 47 adults with major depressive disorder. Dependent process variables were narrative reflexivity (assessed at Sessions 1 and 8) and therapeutic alliance (assessed at Sessions 1, 3 and 8). Primary dependent outcome variables were depressive symptoms and inter-personal relatedness. Primary analyses assessed therapy outcome at pre-therapy, post-therapy and three-month follow-up and utilized a benchmarking strategy to the evaluate pre-therapy to post-therapy and post-therapy to follow-up gains, effect size and pre-therapy to post-therapy clinical significance. Results indicated that when a sub-sample of clients were categorised into five least-improved and five most-improved groups (according to depressive symptom change), there was a differential change in the percentage of reflexive sequences in the discourse of clients at the end of therapy depending on outcome. Improvement in the quality of the working alliance was associated with improvements in depressive symptoms and inter-personal relatedness, with working alliance improvement from Session 1 to 8 sharing 19% of the variance in depressive symptom improvement and 17% of the variance in inter-personal relatedness improvement from pre-therapy to post-therapy. The clinical trial provided empirical support for the utility of narrative therapy in improving depressive symptoms and inter-personal relatedness from pre-therapy to post-therapy: the magnitude of change indicating large effect sizes (d = 1.10 to 1.36) for depressive symptoms and medium effect sizes (d = .52 to .62) for inter-personal relatedness. Therapy was effective in reducing depressive symptoms in clients with moderate and severe pre-therapy depressive symptom severity. Improvements in depressive symptoms, but not inter-personal relatedness, were maintained three-months following therapy. The reduction in depressive symptoms and the proportion of clients who achieved clinically significant improvement (53%) in depressive symptoms at post-therapy were comparable to improvements from standard psychotherapies, reported in benchmark research. This research has implications for assisting our understanding of narrative approaches, refining strategies that will facilitate recovery from psychological disorder and providing clinicians with a broader evidence base for narrative practice. Despite limitations of a repeated-measures research design, use of a standardised intervention protocol, coupled with outcome evaluation of clinical significance enhanced internal validity. Future research could examine narrative therapy in a larger sample, with different disorders, and with an alternative therapy or control group. Coding a greater number of therapy transcripts for evaluating associations of narrative reflexivity with working alliance and outcomes could enhance understanding of narrative reflexivity. Thesis strengths included a strong theoretical foundation underpinning the research design and arguments, examination of therapy process in the context of outcome, and a parsimonious evaluation of narrative therapy outcomes.

Presenting Minds in Graphic Narratives

Abstract: The paper deals with the presentation of minds in the mixed media environment of graphic narratives, inspired by the notion of narrative experientiality as it is defined in recent narratology. Focusing specifically on three interrelated medium-specific issues, it examines the way graphic narratives can also be said to stimulate the viewer'sengagement with the minds of characters and narrators: the mimetic aspect of the graphic image; the problem of the narrative agent; and the interaction between visual focalization, verbal focalization and verbal narration. Graphic narratives pose a challenge to common narratological analytical categories concerning narratorial authority, enunciation and control in that they display diverse and shifting relationships between verbal narration and visual presentations. The analysis of the graphic means of thought and mind presentation aims to illuminate some of the challenges that narrative theory meets in its transmedial extension. The main examples include first-person autobiographical narratives as well as third-person historical fiction that uses various focalizers and "behaviorist" graphic narratives that are structured around dialogue and action.

Researching education : visually - digitally - spatially

Abstract: The book shows the possibilities, problems and researcher responses to working with image through complex theoretical territory such as Actor network theory, Deleuzian theory, feminist and poststructuralist methods, positioning theory and narrative theory ... The book moves across the stages of education from early childhood, middle years, secondary schooling to higher education.

Strategic Empathizing: Techniques of Bounded, Ambassadorial, and Broadcast Narrative Empathy

Abstract: This essay in the field of rhetorical narratology theorizes three varieties of authors’ strategic empathizing, adding to the understanding of the relationship among idealized authorial audiences and actual, historic audiences made up of a variety of real readers. Keen suggests that authorial strategic empathizing can be discerned by studying techniques of bounded, ambassadorial, and broadcast narrative empathy in novels.

Narrative unreliability in the twentieth-century first-person novel.

Abstract: This volume deals with the occurrence and development of unreliable first-person narration in twentieth century Western literature. The different articles approach this topic both from the angle of literary theory and through a close reading of literary texts from a variety of national literatures, including French, Italian, German, British, Dutch, Danish and Polish. In this way, the collection highlights the different uses to which unreliability has been put in different contexts, poetical traditions and literary movements.

Tudor Autobiography: Listening for Inwardness

Abstract: Histories of autobiography in England often assume the genre hardly existed before 1600. But "Tudor Autobiography" investigates eleven sixteenth-century English writers who used sermons, a saint's biography, courtly and popular verse, a traveler's report, a history book, a husbandry book, and a supposedly fictional adventure novel to share the secrets of the heart and tell their life stories.In the past such texts have not been called autobiographies because they do not reveal much of the inwardness of their subject, a requisite of most modern autobiographies. But, according to Meredith Anne Skura, writers reveal themselves not only by what they say but by how they say it. Borrowing methods from affective linguistics, narratology, and psychoanalysis, Skura shows that a writer's thoughts and feelings can be traced in his or her language. Rejecting the search for 'the early modern self' in life writing, "Tudor Autobiography" instead asks what authors said about themselves, who wrote about themselves, how, and why. The result is a fascinating glimpse into a range of lived and imagined experience that challenges assumptions about life and autobiography in the early modern period.

Narrative Progression in the Short Story: First Steps in a Corpus Stylistic Approach

Abstract: I am interested in the putative textual signalings of narrative progression, and thereafter the reader expectations that these foster; I am trying to identify such signalings (or narrative prospection, as it is also called) with new research methods, namely those of corpus linguistics. Research of this kind, blending a literary interest with use of corpus tools, is coming to be known as corpus stylistics (or more narrowly, corpus narratology). For readers of this journal I assume that neither explaining nor justifying an interest in narrative progression is necessary, so I will discuss this relatively briefly. I will spend a little more time outlining what corpus stylistics entails and what its limitations are; and then I will share some ways in which I have tried to make it useful in the pursuit of my research interest, the textualization of narrative prospection. Narrative prospection is itself only a stage in the experiential sequence of interest to me. I assume that the text's prospections cumulatively and serially guide the reader to expect the story currently being read to continue and terminate in one way rather than others (at the least, the prospections will foster probabilistic expectations). The ways in which the subsequent narrative text confirms or flouts

Viewing the Leadership Narrative through Alternate Lenses: An Autoethnographic Investigation *

Abstract: This conceptual-theoretical article revisits the work of Parry and Hansen on the nature of the organizational story as leadership. The present article is written in the autoethnographic style. The original narrative work is re-examined through the lenses of autoethnography, narrative theory, metaphor/discourse, critical realism and conventional quantitative research. The insights provided by this methodological triangulation are examined. The conclusion is that organizational stories will reflect leadership if they are plausible to the intended audience, give all organizational members an empowered part in the story, have a moral to the story, and have a happy ending. The overarching theme that is proposed is of leadership as the generation of individual hope for a better existence.

Classical and/or Postclassical Narratology

Abstract: HE ‘POSTCLASSICAL NARRATOLOGY’ category, if not the label, and the distinction classical/postclassical were explicitly discussed for the first time in a 1997 article by David Herman entitled “Scripts, Sequences, and Stories: Elements of a Postclassical Narratology.” Two years later, in the introduction to Narratologies: New Perspectives in Narrative Analysis, a collection of articles edited by Herman, the narratologist underlined the distinction he had outlined, and he emphasized the postclassical nature of the texts he had gathered. In 2005 Monika Fludernik took up this distinction, while modulating it, in her “Histories of Narrative Theory (II): From Structuralism to the Present.” There she sketched one or two histories of the evolution of narratological studies and briefly characterized some recent tendencies of narratology. Thus, it seems that the distinction proposed by Herman was compelling enough to acquire mainstream (“historical”) status in less than ten years. 1 In what is called its classical phase, narratology may be viewed as a scientifically motivated, structuralist inspired theory of narrative which examines what narratives have in common as well as what enables them to differ narratively from one another. It refers back to Saussurean linguistics through its interest in narrative langue rather than narrative paroles, what allows a narrative to mean rather than what that narrative means. Particularly successful in the 1960s and 1970s, it includes among its most famous representatives the French or Francophonic founding fathers (Roland Barthes and the veritable manifesto constituted by his “Introduction a l’analyse structurale des recits”), Tzvetan Todorov (who coined the very term “narratologie” and defined it in his Grammaire du Decameron as the “science du recit” 2 ), Gerard Genette (probably the most influential of all narratologists), A. J. Greimas (and the Semiotic School of Paris), Claude Bremond (and his Logique du recit), important continuators like Mieke Bal or Seymour Chatman, distant cousins like Wayne Booth or Franz Stanzel, and (Russian as well as Jamesian-American) formalist or quasi-formalist ancestors. Indeed, classical narratology can itself be characterized as formalist. It distinguishes conceptually between Gehalt and Gestalt, matter and manner, or—to use Hjelmslevian terminology—substance and form. It locates the specificity of narrative as opposed to non-narrative in the form (not the substance) of narrated content and narrating expres

The Narrative Fallacy

Abstract: This article uses narrative theory to apply a critical analysis to holistic evidence theory. As an alternative to evidentiary holism, we present traditional atomism as a system geared to the protection of defendants against the adverse influence of prevalent hegemonic narratives, which contributes to and strengthens educational symbolic values (such as the commitment to judging the actions of the accused rather than the accused herself, or the presumption of innocence) as well as protecting marginalized groups in society (including accused people generally). We do not challenge the argument regarding the importance of and perhaps even the need for narrative, as a method of granting meaning to human experience. We do challenge the normative implications commonly drawn from these theories. In this context we present and critique Professor Allen's theory of Relative Plausibility, and Professor Burns' endorsement of freedom of proof. We emphasize the importance of general principles of evidence law (such as Rule 403, in the Federal Rules of Evidence) and the admissibility rules (such as the inadmissibility of hearsay and opinion) as brakes that impede narrative freedom, requiring reference to questions of the credibility of information used by adjudicators, and the personal credibility of their sources. We also analyze the rule regarding character evidence and evidence of disposition as brakes on inferences based on generalizations which are constructed in the dominant stories of communities. We define the Narrative Fallacy as an erroneous heuristic, through which fact finders, attempting to use narratives in order to make sense of insufficient information, mistakenly choose the wrong narrative and so end up distorting the evidence presented. The paper situates the Narrative Fallacy alongside, but independent of, the intuitive statistical judgment fallacies defined and demonstrated in the research of Kahneman, Tversky, and other scholars.

Mystééres limpides: Time and Transformation in Debussy's Des pas sur la neige

Abstract: Vladimir Jankeeleevitch heard Debussy9s music as a sonic manifestation of certain nuclear mysteries of existence: mysteries of death, destiny, anguish, pleasure, love, space, and——in various forms——time. To describe these mysteries, he developed the paradoxical locution of the mysteere limpide , the ““lucid mystery.”” Debussy9s mysteries are lucid, Jankeeleevitch argued, in that they are not hidden behind arcane codes or hermetic formalisms, but are instead palpably present to experience, sensually manifest in the music9s sounding surface. As such, they prove resistant to hermeneutic and analytical attention, which, per Jankeeleevitch, seek always to penetrate beyond sounding surfaces in search of hidden meanings. This article takes Jankeeleevitch9s ideas as a point of departure in both a positive and negative sense, adopting his notion of the mysteere limpide as a valuable heuristic in Debussy study, but challenging his highly limited views of analysis and hermeneutics. The article takes as its focus Debussy9s Preelude Des pas sur la neige and explores the ways in which it can be heard to manifest mysteeres of time, representation, and consciousness. It does this, however, with the aid of analysis and hermeneutics, drawing on transformational theory, familiar concepts from narratology, and Proustian notions of memory. In short, the article deploys discourses anathema to Jankeeleevitch for decidedly Jankeeleevitchian ends. The conclusion explores the degrees to which such a paradoxical effort succeeds, ultimately arguing that discursive intervention——technical or otherwise——need not be a means of seeking out hidden meanings, but can instead be a means of drawing us closer to music as a physical, material phenomenon.

"I Left You in Crete": Narrative Deception and Social Hierarchy in the Letter to Titus

Abstract: (ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.) Behind every letter is a story, but behind a forged letter there are at least twoand one is a lie. The technique of the pseudonymous letter is to bridge surreptitiously the gap between the fiction it tells and the historical situation in which it seeks to have an effect. This is true for the NT letter to Titus.1 To analyze the rhetoric of Titus is to map this secret crossing in a particular case. The provocative and innovative readings of biblical "love stories" by Mieke BaI raise the question that motivates my treatment of the letter to Titus.2 In her work Lethal Love, BaI asks the question "Is there a relationship between ideological dominance and specific forms of representation?"3 With Bal's question and also her methods in mind, I rephrase her question for my purposes and my subject, namely, What is the relationship between (1) the pseudonymity of the letter to Titus, (2) the narrative of interaction between "Paul" and "Titus" that the letter implies, and (3) the social structures of hierarchy that the letter sets up? To put it another way: What happens when the audior writes and the authence hears the words "I left you in Crete"-especially if neither has ever been there? To hint at the conclusion this article develops, a narratological reading of the epistle to Titus suggests mat the open-ended elements and time shifting of the episde to Titus ("anachronies" in the terms of a narratological reading), and the relationship portrayed between Paul and Tims inscribe the ideology of the letter so that narrative performs a foundational element in the rhetorical action of the letter. I. METHODOLOGY A highly formalized reading of the letter to Titus makes clear the relation of the letter's duplicitous form to its rhetorical objectives: the duplicitous form of the letter to Titus is foundational to its advocacy of specific social manifestations of dominance. Umberto Eco has said that "[i]t is usually possible to transform a non-narrative text into a narrative one."4 This is doubly true for a pseudonymous letter: one letter, two stories-the narrative contained within the letter and the historical story of the location and effect of the forged letter. It is exactiy here, in the space between the historical and the fictional, that a combination of questions from historical criticism and from narratology can provide insights into the workings of the letter to Titus. Narratology has been "out of fashion" lately, largely because of the persuasive critiques of structuralism, which left narratology looking like yet another overconfident and underrelevant game that found the same truth (or the same deep structure) lying wimin everything it examined. Again, Bal is one of the few critics who has stood by narratology and met the critiques of structuralism directiy - not by denying them but by reconsidering the role of narratology.5 Without recapitolating her defense, suffice it to say that BaI makes it possible to understand narratology as a systematic tool to produce a paraphrase rather tiian to discover a structure. The question of whether the systematic paraphrases that narratology produces "are really there" misses the mark once it is conceived as a specific and strategic method rather than a general theory. This reduction of the autiiority of narratology is what makes it possible for narratology to retain its usefulness. By combining these methods - that is, by comparing the story in Titus to a reconstruction of the historical situation of the letter- it is possible to bring to the foreground the relationship of pseudonymity and dominance, that is, the relationship of the narrative deception that the letter practices and the social hierarchy it strives to create or maintain. II. Provenance and Program of the Letter to Titus At the beginning, I should state my working position concerning the historical situation of the letter to Titus. …

Risk, suffering and competing narratives in the psychiatric assessment of an Iraqi refugee

Abstract: This paper highlights the problem of “place” for an Iraqi refugee who, for years, had been tortured and imprisoned in his home country. Specifically, the paper presents a case study of a clinical encounter with this refugee, who had come to the attention of an Australian Crisis Assessment and Treatment Team. Drawing from narrative theory, the paper describes the chaotic nature of the encounter to show how the diverse motives, claims and actions of those present expose the struggle involved in the emplotment of an emerging narrative. The case study is constructed and analysed to illustrate the interpretive machinery of “clinical reasoning” and, in particular, the tension and play between “paradigmatic thinking” and “narrative thinking.” More generally, this analysis follows the work of social scientists who seek to expand methodologies for writing about human suffering.