Narrative articles from October 2005

Narrative archives from October 2005

Erratum.(Correction Notice)
October 1, 2005... The first phrase of Teresa Bridgeman's essay in the May 2005 issue (p. 125) should read "Prolepsis, or flashforward," rather than "Prolesis, or flashback."

Who's here? Thoughts on narrative identity and narrative imperialism.(Editorial)
October 1, 2005... This issue contains a provocative dialogue between George Butte and Paul John Eakin about Eakin's essay in the May 2004 issue, "What Are We Reading When We Read Autobiography?" At stake in the dialogue are (1) our understanding of the roles of...

Multiple indemnity: film noir, James M. Cain, and adaptations of a tabloid case: the disappearing death chamber.
October 1, 2005... The original conclusion to Billy Wilder's Academy-Award nominated film noir Double Indemnity (1944) depicted its protagonist entering the gas chamber for execution. Walter Neff, having helped his lover Phyllis Dietrichson kill her husband for...

Jane Austen's aesthetics and ethics of surprise.
October 1, 2005... In a memorable scene in Joseph Andrews, Henry Fielding likens Lady Booby, sexually rebuffed by her virtuous servant, to "the statue of surprize" spoken of by poets. (1) Presumably, he invokes an old metaphor of astonished or fearful people as...

Narrative medicine: attention, representation, affiliation.(DIALOGUE)
October 1, 2005... Sick persons and those who care for them become obligatory story-tellers and story-listeners. Hippocrates knew this, Chekhov knew this, Freud knew this, and yet knowledge of the centrality of storytelling was obscured in medicine throughout...

Listening in psychoanalysis.(DIALOGUE)
October 1, 2005... Analysands continuously give signs of feeling ambivalent toward their analysts and their being in analysis at all. Some of them repress the negative side of this ambivalence; others, trying to avoid their positive feelings of love, gratitude,...

Telling and listening: constraints and opportunities.(DIALOGUE)
October 1, 2005... Dr. Charon makes an eloquent and convincing case for the importance of narrative competence in medical practice and medical training. My contribution to this discussion of storytelling and medicine is from the perspective of cultural studies...

Resisting attrition in stories of trauma.(DIALOGUE)
October 1, 2005... From my perspective as an oral historian who is interested in narratives of trauma, Rita Charon's essay prompts the reminder that memory is something that sets out to capture something else that is already lost. As I think about the project of...

I know that I know that I know: reflections on Paul John Eakin's "what are we reading when we read autobiography?".(DIALOGUE)
October 1, 2005... Paul John Eakin's recent article in Narrative, "What Ate We Reading When We Read Autobiography?" illustrates, although sometimes inadvertently, the value of reflecting on literary narrative, in this instance autobiography, in light of research...

Selfhood, autobiography, and interdisciplinary inquiry: a reply to George Butte.(DIALOGUE)
October 1, 2005... In my essay "What Are We Reading When We Read Autobiography?" I investigate narrative identity, the idea that what we are could be said to be a story of some kind. Attracted by neurologist Antonio Damasio's belief that both self and narrative...