Abstract
The convergence in the 1980s between postmodern epistemology, cognitive psychology and narratology forcefully reoriented the idea of storytelling. From a fictional device for representing reality, storytelling was recast as a cognitive tool underlying all mental processes. On this view, our sense of reality was seen as an effect produced by individual narrativising. This idea has many implications. The aim of this essay is not to try to survey the literature on this complex topic but to characterise two issues that the narrative view of reality obscures. One is the role of a shared reality and the other is political inertia. This argument seeks to create space for thinking about the idea of a common reality which has been traduced in theoretical discussion in favour of fractured reality. It concludes with a discussion of what can be gained by seeing narrative as a vehicle for approaching reality and not reality itself.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
See The numbers: http://www.the-numbers.com/market/sources.
The subtitle is: The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and 20 years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates.
Pain and trauma suffered by the dispossessed have been more often expressed through song, dance, the visual arts and performance as embodied protest. See Hutchinson (2013).
References
Berger, J. (1984). And our faces, my heart, brief as photos. London: Bloomsbury.
Bruner, J. (1991). The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry, 18(1), 1–21.
Forster, E. M. (1927). Aspects of the novel. London: Penguin Classics (2005).
Herman, D. (2013). Storytelling and the science of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hodgkinson, T. (2014). How hollywood is killing the art of screenwriting. The Spectator.
http://new.spectator.co.uk/2014/11/how-hollywood-is-killing-the-art-of-screenwriting.
Huang, M., Bridge, H., Kemp, M., & Parker, A. J. (2011). Human cortical activity evoked by the assignment of authenticity when viewing works of art. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2011.00134.
Hutchinson, Y. (2013). South African performance and archives of memory. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Lodge, D. (2004). Consciousness and the novel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Schanks, R., & Morson, G. S. (1995). Tell me a story: Narrative and intelligence. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Shields, D. (2011). Reality hunger. London: Penguin.
Turner, M. (1998). The literary mind. Oxford: OUP.
Woolf, V. (1981). The diary of Virginia Woolf III 1925–1930 (Ed., Bell, A.O.). London: The Hogarth Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Park, S.S. Based on a true story. Neohelicon 43, 473–483 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-016-0357-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-016-0357-6