1887
Volume 8, Issue 1
  • ISSN 1387-6740
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9935
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

Despite the belief that narrative may serve as an important vehicle for exploring human experience and selfhood, there frequently exists the paradoxical supposition that narrative accounts cannot help but falsify life itself: Insofar as time is viewed in fundamentally linear terms and experience, in turn, is viewed as that which simply "goes on" in time, narratives may be viewed as entailing an imposition of literary form upon that which is ostensibly formless. After considering the idea of mythical time, tied to the image of the circle, and the idea of historical time, tied to the image of the line, it is suggested that human experience and selfhood are themselves woven out of the fabric of narrative. In light of contemporary understandings of the self, particularly those promoted in certain quarters of post-structuralist and social constructionist thought, it is further suggested that the narrative fabric of the self has become frayed. By rethinking the interrelationship of time, experience, and self via the idea of narrative, there emerges the opportunity to recognize more fully the profound continuities between myth and history as well as life and literature. (Hermeneutics, History, Myth, Narrative, Self, Time)

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/ni.8.1.03fre
1998-01-01
2024-12-02
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/ni.8.1.03fre
Loading
  • Article Type: Research Article
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error