Talk:Narrative/Archive 1

Plot?
"This page, for example, is not written with human characters and a plot." Oh no? :). PiCo 06:50, 31 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Can you name A character? Describe the plot? Hyacinth 01:59, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Story (disambiguation)
This links to story, which is a disambiguation page that links back here. Obviously, this is neither productive or desirable. None of the alternatives seem particularly appropriate, so I suggest that "story" be de-linkified. But I'm open to other suggestions. - Xtifr 08:13, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Pointer for "Narrative Text"
A search for "Narrative Text" should point to this page. When I searched for "Narrative Text" I didn't see this page until I instead searched for "Narrative". --Gellender 02:13, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Story
This first line of this article defines a narrative as a "story", and links to the "Story" article, which defines a "Story" as a narrative and (among other places) links back here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.218.180.68 (talk) 14:23, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Narrative Paradigm
I don’t think Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm, if it is “outside the mainstream of semiotics”, deserves that much space on this page.--TowerDragon 11:21, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree. It has a whole article devoted to it anyway. What's more, it's a theory of communication, not a theory of narrative. Saying "all communication is narrative" tells you nothing about narrative as such. I'm going to delete it, except for the link to the aforementioned article. Ninj 00:37, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup
Sorry, must point out this is an incredibly badly written page, quite obviously cobbled together. Request for cleanup? - Lawrence Dunn — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.142.253.252 (talk) 21:20, 24 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I do agree. It's not written like an encyclopedia article at all. Valerie 23:56, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * What I would desperately desperately want is for articles dealing with new-fangled ways of describing literature be written clearly and without jargon. I've got a Ph.D., I'm not dumb as a brick, all I need is to find out what, exactly, "narrative discourse analysis" means, and I'm faced with articles like this, written by great experts for the edification of other great experts.  I'm a historian, not a litsy critsy type, and I'm as befogged as before by this and other articles on the modern concepts of dealing with literature.  [sigh] StJ. Tremayne 20:37, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * It still looks cobbled together to me. The 'literary theory' section is mostly structuralist narratology - and there are separate articles for structuralism and narratology, so I'm not sure that this stuff belongs here (except perhaps in precis). Come to that, why do we need a section called "literary theory" in an article on narrative anyway? "Narrative" is a much bigger topic than "literature". I vote we cut the whole section and replace it with a link to the page on literary theory. Or maybe we could call the section "theories of narrative" and have links to a range of other pages, including both of the above. And Tremayne, I don't think the problem here is that the page is written by, or for, 'great experts'...Ninj 00:57, 22 April 2007 (UTC)


 * PS. I've just deleted from the introduction the assertion that humans use narrative to better understand the world - it was vague (note the "etc") and it unbalanced the introduction since sense-making is just one use of narrative and no other uses are mentioned at this point in the article. And I really don't know what's meant by "a number of specialised applications", but I'll let that stand for the time being. If anyone can make it less vague, I'll be happy for it to stay. Ninj 01:05, 22 April 2007 (UTC)


 * PPS. The "conceptual issues" section is also in serious need of clean-up - not so much because of the content but because it's clearly been edited together from several different people's contributions without much in the way of organising being done on the way. Also, what does "conceptual issues" mean? It strikes me that the main issue - of those mentioned here - is the distinction between literary and non-literary narratives, and the remainder relate (again) to the development of structuralist narratology. Could we possibly try for a more informative heading? Ninj 01:11, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

ghnu : Proto Indo European
If someone has access to JSTOR, see if "A West Germanic Reflex of the Verscharfung" has a ciation for 'ghnu'. J. D. Redding 03:37, 1 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I have access to an American Heritage Dictionary (2002) with a fairly serious Appendix, which contains roots. In the meantime we could just go with: gnō-, which has yet another Indo-European root, but, also another Latin root. Here's how this part of the citation goes: NARRATE, from Latin narrāre (< *gnarrāre), to tell, relate, from gnārus, knowing, expert.71.167.159.143 15:30, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Narrative as a mode
I know that mimetic approaches to literature are reasonably unfashionable in literary theory at the moment, but nonetheless I think that it is important that somewhere in this article, probably in the introduction, the classical distinction of modes is included in the definition of narrative. That is, to quote Aristotle's Poetics:
 * "For the medium being the same, and the objects the same, the poet may imitate by narration—in which case he can either take another personality as Homer does, or speak in his own person, unchanged—or he may present all his characters as living and moving before us" (section III).

That is, the classical distinction between narrative and dramatic modes: narrative establishes a subject-object relation (the poet speaks directly to the 'audience') while drama creates an autonomous interpersonal dynamic (the poet speaks only through the indirect medium of the characters).
 * "This is not merely a technical distinction but constitutes, rather, one of the cardinal principles of a poetics of the drama as opposed to one of narrative fiction. The distinction is, indeed, implicit in Aristotle's differentiation of representational modes, namely diegesis (narrative description) versus mimesis (direct imitation). It has, as we shall see, important consequences for both the logic and the language of the drama." (Keir Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, 111; my bolds)

The definition that the article offers at present, which makes narrative synonymous with 'story' does not take account of this classical distinction. It is important outside of literary theory; for example, it is difficult to make sense of what Bertolt Brecht is on about when he says that his epic theatre is a shift of emphasis from the dramatic towards narrative if one thinks that narrative is the same as story. I believe this all comes down to the classical distinction between the lyric, the drama and the epos (i.e., there is a third term here, the lyric, in which the poet turns their back on their audience and addresses a muse; hence in modern terms, poetry, drama, novels). The central point here, I believe, is that the definition of narrative has to include the process of telling rather than showing (drama). *Ahem* This. Is. Stupid. DionysosProteus 03:24, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Conceptual issues
What is the "it" in the third bullet, "How is it manifested as art, cinema, theatre, or literature?"? BillyPreset (talk) 17:28, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

'Narrative IEDs'
This section gave the distinct whiff of have been produced to promote one forthcoming book. I removed it. Unless a strong case can be made for this idea existing in the general academic, cultural or popular discourse - and not just in one book - then it should not be here. I would like to remind authors (and publishers) that many previous attempts at self-promotion on Wikipedia have backfired. Jamal (talk) 13:11, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * This section was added not to promote a forthcoming book but to highlight a new trend in narrative studies applied to strategic communication campaigns discussed in Bernardi, Cheong, Lundry, and Ruston's book (an academic, pier reviewed text) I understand your point with the promotion, but I think the section can be reworded so it just states that this concept was suggested in this book recently. (130.212.73.66 (talk) 16:52, 8 February 2012 (UTC))

Edit
There has been something omitted from this sentence "Owen Flanagan of Duke University, a leading that humans in all cultures come to cast their own identity in some sort of narrative form." 70.29.182.235 (talk) 04:41, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I proposed to merge content from article on narrator to this article. Rationale: minimal content that could be covered in or requires the context of a page on a broader topic. In this case the broader topic is this article.

According to the Help:Merging:
 * Merging is a normal editing action (...) and as such generally does not need to be proposed and processed. (...) it makes little sense to object to a merger purely on procedural grounds, e.g. "you cannot do that without discussion" is not a good argument.
 * -- DancingPhilosopher ( talk ) 12:36, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Upcoming Addition: Narrative as a learning tool in Indigenous American Communities
In the next couple of days, I plan to add a couple passages to this page in order to expand upon the use of Narrative in non-western societies. For example, in Indigenous American Communities of the Americas, narrative plays a central role in educating children in proper behavior, morals, and also plays a key role in the passing on of knowledge and the preservation of a cultural identity. Since this Wikipedia page currently lacks this information, I am planning to add a section called "Narrative as Storytelling" in order to provide a more complete and well-rounded definition of narrative. Pyrolirion (talk) 05:35, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Domestic Violence
"But, in truth, the irony is that domestic violence has become ‘big business' because the law system does not listen to the voices of these battered women"

"There was another study on Hurricane Katrina survivors where the media misrepresented the voices of the survivors, and manipulated the public in a negative way. The media and press turned the whole country against a community that desperately needed help because journalist reshaped the stories of the survivors in television broadcasts and newspaper articles."

The section on "Storytelling rights" does not have a neutral point of view. Mr. Phorcys (talk) 20:34, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Narratology
I have corrected some misused terms taken from Genette, but globally the whole section on narratology is erroneous and incomplete and requires serious editing. There is no working definition of focalization, for example, although the term is used to describe narrative technique. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.229.152.125 (talk) 16:41, 21 August 2016 (UTC)