Narrative: what we tell ourselves

Narrative is the conscious recognition of our environment and our life experience. It begins as our inner voice conceptualizes the story of everything we see and do.

Narrative is central to human communication. Being social animals, we spontaneously share our narrative with others around us.

Narrative drives the development of society. A common collective identity and culture evolve from shared narrative. Norms for acceptable social behaviour and moral concepts are distilled from the accumulated narrative. Structured and formalized narratives, such as legends, became tools for teaching and learning culture and moral codes.

Imagination expands the limits of narrative and transforms fact into fiction. It allows the personification of the inanimate and metaphorical representation of the animate. Fables exploit imaginary forms to deliver moral messages.

Spirituality exists somewhere between fact and fiction. Communities created Myth to communicate spiritual, sacred messages. Mythic narrative describes what affects the soul, as well as what cannot be explained rationally.

This website explores several dimensions of narrative. We will examine the temporal evolution of narrative form, from prehistory to prophecy, oral history, personal discourse, moral discourse, the shift from verbal to textual, media, and, of course, storytelling.

Although storytelling has become a contemporary fashion, we will discuss the prevalence of spoken word artists as a phenomenon. We will explore storytelling as a pervasive occurrence from urban myth to corporate mythology!

In our contemporary Society, we are inundated with visual media content that feeds us a continual narrative that shapes our knowledge and our comportment. Consequently, we will also discuss the development and use of visual narrative.

We begin with pages on narratology, the study of narrative, to establish a vocabulary for discussing narrative. This initial posting will be followed by a discussion of the temporal context of narrative, from creation to prophecy.

Please visit the following pages:

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