Saturday 24 November 2018

Narrative


Johnson considered ‘narrate’ a word only used in Scotland.
Narrate (vb.narro, Latin) to relate, to tell; a word only used in Scotland.

Johnson offers a citation:
Consider whether the narrator be honest and faithful, as well as skilful, whether he hath no peculiar gain or profit by believing or reporting it. (Watt’s Logick)

Since Johnson’s time the word has become a fixture in the Anglosphere acting as verbal grout in its sententious Foucauldian form or as a genteelism for story. Prior to the 19th.Century it was not in general use. In Scottish law (S.O.D.): That part of a deed or document which narrates the relevant or essential facts.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym as told to E.A. Poe abides by this stricture though we note that Poe advised that it be presented as fiction. It reads like a bad opium trip drawn up from the orlop of his unconscious.

In Ulysses Joyce limns the post colonial narrative

It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking glass of a servant

The mirror that is too damaged for the house ends up in the servant’s quarters, as a superseded distortion. The Irish fear the fate of Jim, the boy who was eaten by a lion (Belloc):

His Father, who was self-controlled,
Bade all the children round attend
To James's miserable end,
And always keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse.

Narrative in the psychological sense is like the framing of a suspect by police through constant interrogation and sleep deprivation. After a few days Gerry Conlon told them that his Auntie Annie Maguire ran a bomb factory. That lady had a non-ironic photo of Queen Elizabeth in her living room.

Likewise over generations through stories confirming and enhancing nascent prejudices a population can come to believe almost anything. Narrative in this sense is a useful concept. Narrativity as an indication of a meaningful life or one which its events are connected in an orderly and consistent fashion seems a subjective criterion.

The spatchcocking of ‘narrative’ is a bad rhetorical habit. Replace with parable, tale, story, legend etc where they fit.




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