Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Preface to the second edition
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Narrative and life
- Chapter 2 Defining narrative
- Chapter 3 The borders of narrative
- Chapter 4 The rhetoric of narrative
- Chapter 5 Closure
- Chapter 6 Narration
- Chapter 7 Interpreting narrative
- Chapter 8 Three ways to interpret narrative
- Chapter 9 Adaptation across media
- Chapter 10 Character and self in narrative
- Chapter 11 Narrative and truth
- Chapter 12 Narrative worlds
- Chapter 13 Narrative contestation
- Chapter 14 Narrative negotiation
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Glossary and topical index
- Index of authors and narratives
Chapter 14 - Narrative negotiation
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Preface to the second edition
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Narrative and life
- Chapter 2 Defining narrative
- Chapter 3 The borders of narrative
- Chapter 4 The rhetoric of narrative
- Chapter 5 Closure
- Chapter 6 Narration
- Chapter 7 Interpreting narrative
- Chapter 8 Three ways to interpret narrative
- Chapter 9 Adaptation across media
- Chapter 10 Character and self in narrative
- Chapter 11 Narrative and truth
- Chapter 12 Narrative worlds
- Chapter 13 Narrative contestation
- Chapter 14 Narrative negotiation
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Glossary and topical index
- Index of authors and narratives
Summary
This chapter balances the previous one. Both are about ways in which we think with narrative. But where in the last chapter we focussed on the chemistry of narratives in combination, here we are looking at a chemistry taking place within narratives (or, more accurately, in our interaction with them). Where in the last chapter we looked at the ways in which narratives are used as armament in a larger contest of narratives like a trial or a political race or an intellectual controversy, here we are looking at narratives as structures made up of contests, the claims of which they may or may not negotiate successfully. In part, this chapter brings us back to the agon – the contest or conflict, which is so often the life of narrative. More broadly it brings us back to the observation I made in Chapter Five that larger cultural, psychological, and moral conflicts are at play in narrative, some but not all of them represented by the opponents in the agon.
Narrative without conflict
Conflict is such a powerful element in narrative that there are those (Todorov, Herman) who make it a necessary defining feature of the term “narrative.” But given the inclusive definition of narrative that I have adopted for this book – the representation of an event or events – conflict is not a necessary component for something to qualify as a narrative. There are many short narratives, by my definition, in which conflict is nonexistent. […]
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- Information
- The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative , pp. 193 - 213Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008