story |
Working Definition:
A story is a narrative that begins with a state of desire or conflict that is changed by an event into a different state of affairs, often the inverse of the first in the sense that the desire or conflict is resolved.
Disciplinary Definitions:
story. 1. The CONTENT plane of NARRATIVE as opposed to its EXPRESSION plane or DISCOURSE; the "what" of a narrative as opposed to its how; the NARRATED as opposed to the NARRATING; the FICTION as opposed to the NARRATION (in Ricardou's sense of the terms); the EXISTENTS and EVENTS represented in a narrative. 2. The FABULA (or basic material arranged into a PLOT) as opposed to the SJUZET or plot. 3. A narrative of events with an emphasis on chronology, as opposed to plot, which is a narrative of events with an emphasis on causality (Forster): "The king died, and then the queen died" is a story, whereas "The king died, and then the queen died of grief" is a plot. 4. A causal sequence of events pertinent to a character or characters seeking to solve a problem or reach a goal. As such, though every story is a narrative (the recounting of one or more events), not every narrative is necessarily a story (consider, for instance, a narrative merely recounting a temporal sequence of events that are not causally related). Prince, Dictionary of Narratology
See Chatman, S. (1978). Story and Discourse. Ithaca: Cornell UP.
Comments:
To emphasize the relation between storytelling and the making of the self, I emphaize the role of desire and conflict in storytelling which are the triggers of identification with figures in the story for the tellers and their audiences, noting that problem solving and goal seeking imply desires and obstacles along the way create conflicts.
Notes
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last revised:
June 13, 2007
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