Narratology

About: Narratology is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2833 publications have been published within this topic receiving 50998 citations. The topic is also known as: narrative theory.

Oedipus in the Welfare Office

Abstract: In an earlier publication (Wagenaar, 1997), Wagenaar demonstrated that the way administrators talk about their work is narratively structured. Interviews with welfare officers displayed the structural characteristics, and were organized in ways, as was suggested by narrative theory. He further argued in that paper that administrators use narrative to solve the everyday problems and challenges that confront them in the course of their work. These problems and challenges derive from the everyday, practical nature of administrative work. In an impressionistic way the author delineated, what he thought were the main characteristics of everyday administrative practice. Administrative practice, he argued, was action-oriented, subjective, open-ended, concrete, and beset with moral conflict. Stories somehow helped administrators deal with administrative practice

Love from Beyond the Grave: The Epistolary Ghost-Story in Phlegon of Tralles

Abstract: The collection of paradoxa attributed to Phlegon of Tralles, a freedman of the emperor Hadrian, is preserved in a single manuscript, of which the beginning is missing. This chapter deals with the first item in the collection, a justly famous story of the supernatural, which has enjoyed a considerable Nachleben , in the work of Goethe, Washington Irving, Theophile Gautier, and Anatole France, to name but four. It has not exactly been over-studied in modern scholarship, and interest has focused predominantly on what it tells us about ancient belief in ghosts, reconstruction of a putative Urgeschichte , and its relation to similar stories in the folklore of other cultures. Little attention has been paid to its extraordinarily sophisticated narratology, its epistolary form, and the nature of its fictionality. Keywords:epistolary ghost-story; philosophy; Phlegon of Tralles; story of supernatural

Elizabeth Bowen: A Reputation in Writing

Abstract: Immensely popular during her lifetime, the Ango-Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) has since been treated as a peripheral figure on the literary map. If only in view of her prolific outputten novels, nearly eighty short stories, and a substantial body of non- fictionBowen is a noteworthy novelist. The radical quality of her work, however, renders her an exceptional one. Surfacing in both subject matter and style, her fictions harbor a subversive potential which has hitherto gone unnoticed. Using a wide range of critical theories-from semiotics to psychoanalysis, from narratology to deconstruction-this book presents a radical re-reading of a selection of Bowen's novels from a lesbian feminist perspective. Taking into account both cultural contexts and the author's non-fictional writings, the book's main focus is on configurations of gender and sexuality. Bowen's fiction constitutes an exploration of the unstable and destabilizing effects of sexuality in the interdependent processes of subjectivity and what she herself referred to as so-called reality.

Narrative means to humanistic ends.

Abstract: Background: Efforts to "rehumanize" medical education through curriculum reform and program development have been numerous and ongoing in recent years. One particularly intriguing contribution has come from the area of narrative studies. It is now common to use literature in general, and physician-patient narratives in particular, both to expand students' understanding of the clinical encounter and to sensitize them to the humanistic aspects of medicine. Description: In this article, we describe the process by which we have introduced key insights from and elements of narrative theory into our 1st-year clinical skills program. Rather than limiting our efforts to the use of literature and to the description of individual narrative encounters, however, we have framed our entire course as an exercise in narrative construction. We refer to this process as "narrative structuring." Evaluation: A combination of short essays on topics related to the various literary materials utilized in the course, written repor...

Strange Voices in Narrative Fiction

Abstract: How does narratology relate to narrative strangeness? This question is urgent for narratologists who share a marked skepticism towards the idea of using 'natural' narratives as some kind of genetic model for understanding and interpreting all kinds of narratives, and for whom the distinction of fiction is important. This anthology presents a collection of articles that deal with different aspects of narrative voice in fiction ? with strange narratives, narratives of the strange, or, more generally, with the strangeness of fiction, and even with some strange aspects of narratology.