The Practice of Narrative: Storytelling in a Global Context

Download or read book The Practice of Narrative: Storytelling in a Global Context written by Michael Heitkemper-Yates and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-01-04 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2016. Story can have a power and presence that stretches beyond the vast, unspeakable boundaries of time and space; and yet story can also have a delicate impermanence that lasts no longer than a moment before it flashes back into the void. Some stories can bring people together; other stories can tear entire civilisations apart. Stories express and enliven experience; stories project and describe the desires and anxieties of existence. Stories can be narrated through written word and physical gesture, through graphic illustration and musical orchestration, through the spatial dynamics of architecture and the abstract poetics of conjecture. For these and myriad other reasons, storytelling and narrative are central to humanity, and the study of these practices is central to an understanding of what it means to be human. In this volume, the many narrative dimensions, media, and critical approaches to storytelling are explored with the common intention of comprehending and appreciating the global role that story plays in the articulation of human experience.