Toward a definition of narrative

Ryan, Marie‐Laure

doi:10.1017/ccol0521856965.002

Cited by 322 publications

(73 citation statements)

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“…Defining 'narrative' is a complex and controversial issue, both theoretically and methodologically (for overviews, see de Fina and Georgakopoulou, 2012: 1-25;Ryan, 2007). Generally speaking, 'story' or 'narrative' is best seen as a fuzzy category whose members vary in their degree of 'narrativity' (e.g.…”

Section: Narratives Professional Identities and Our Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Good’ and ‘bad’ deaths: Narratives and professional identities in interviews with hospice managers

2014

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This article explores the formal and functional characteristics of narratives of 'good' and 'bad' deaths as they were told by 13 UK-based hospice managers in the course of semi-structured interviews. The interviewees' responses include a variety of remarkably consistent 'narratives of successful/frustrated intervention', which exhibit distinctive formal characteristics in terms of the starting point and core of the action, the choice of personal pronouns and metaphors, and the ways in which positive and negative evaluation is expressed. In functional terms, the hospice managers' narratives play an important role in representing and constructing their professional views, challenges and identities. Overall, the narratives argue for the role of hospices and professional hospice staff in facilitating a 'good' death, and, by presenting a relatively unified view, may potentially preclude alternative perspectives.

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Section: Narratives Professional Identities and Our Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Good’ and ‘bad’ deaths: Narratives and professional identities in interviews with hospice managers

2014

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“…In her essay “Toward a definition of narrative”, however, Marie-Laure Ryan has put forward three potential domains for consideration: discourse, story and use (p.24) 9. For the purposes of this essay, I am most concerned with the aspects of story and use because these are the areas most applicable to the medical encounter: what is the story and how can that story be used to provide good healthcare for the patient?…”

Section: Defining Narrativementioning

confidence: 99%

Anxieties of communication: the limits of narrative in the medical humanities

McKechnie

2014

Med Humanities

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This paper aims to provide an initial response to Angela Woods's endeavour to '(re)ignite critical debates around this topic' in her recent essay 'The limits of narrative: provocations for the medical humanities' (Medical Humanities 2011). Woods's essay challenges the validity of the notion of the narrative self through her discussion and use of Galen Strawson's seminal 'Against narrativity' (2004). To some extent in dialogue with Woods, this article will examine three exploratory concepts connected with the topic. First, it will explore ways in which we might seek to re-place narrative at the centre of the philosophy of good medicine and medical practice by reassessing the role of the narratee in the narrative process. Second, it will reconsider the three alternative forms of expression Woods puts forward as non-narrative--metaphor, phenomenology and photography--as narrative. Finally, and connected to the first two areas of discussion, it will reflect on ways in which narrative might be used to interpret illness and suffering in medical humanities contexts. What I hope to show, in relation to Woods's work on this subject, is that in order to be interpreted (indeed interpretable) the types of non-narrative representation and communication she discusses in fact require a narrative response. We employ narratology to engage with illness experience because narrative is so fundamental to meaning-making that it is not just required, it is an inherent human response to creative outputs we encounter. This is a quite different approach to the question of narrativity in the medical humanities, and it is therefore related to, but not entirely hinged upon, the work that Woods has done, but it is intended to spark further discussion across the emergent discipline.

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“…Usually, this poses no problem as long as there is little clash in the organizing frames, which tends to be the standard case. Fictional worlds are usually structured in analogy to our realworld experience, as Ryan (1991) formulates in her principle of minimal departure. Contrary to a standard formulation of what happens when we get immersed in fictional worlds, I contend that we do not get lost in a story, but maintain our sense of self, of the here and now of reading or viewing.…”

Section: Aspects Of Blending In the Study Of Narrativementioning

confidence: 99%

Blending and the Study of Narrative: An Introduction

Schneider¹

2012

Blending and the Study of Narrative

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Toward a definition of narrative

Cited by 322 publications

References 0 publications

‘Good’ and ‘bad’ deaths: Narratives and professional identities in interviews with hospice managers

‘Good’ and ‘bad’ deaths: Narratives and professional identities in interviews with hospice managers

Anxieties of communication: the limits of narrative in the medical humanities

Blending and the Study of Narrative: An Introduction

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