About Stories
Wednesday March 22, 2006
Tomorrow I leave for America, so I’m going to be spending most of today sorting things out for my journey. I’m only away for five days or so and I’ll be giving a paper at the American Comparative Literature Association’s annual conference. Although the paper might seem to be pretty obscure fare (the title, resoundingly, is “Beyond the River Sambatyon: A Naive Phenomenology of the Story”), it is really a way of following a line of argument in which I have long been interested: the relationship between stories and ethics.
I’ll post a copy of the paper at my personal website after my return; but the substance of it is that the ethics of stortytelling lie as much in the telling and the listening – in undergoing the experience of a story as a story – as they do in the subject matter. I have always felt, and still do, that appending a “moral” to a story somehow kills it dead and that a story is far more than just an attractive way of putting across difficult ideas.
Buddhist scholars often treat the stories of the Buddhist traditions as mere illustrations of Buddhist teachings – for those who do not have sufficient intellectual acuity to understand the teachings themselves. This is patronising and, I think, mistaken. As Kierkegaard points out in Fear and Trembling, to see stories in this sense is to miss the “shudder of thought” that runs through them. There’s more I want to say on this curious idea of the “shudder of thought” in terms of specificially Buddhist stories, but I’ve got bags to pack and things to do before the off. So if I don’t manage to post anything whilst over in the US, I’ll be back to blog some more on the topic after my return, when the jetlag has worn off…
I am very intrigued by this…
I think I agree with your premise, (it’s something I’ve look at myself from a dramatic perspective) and I’m interested to see your argument.
Its a timely question considering that I may be heading in the direction of ‘social’ theatre – not the same thing as moral theatre, I hope..
Have a great trip.
I like your thinking here, and will be looking out for the follow-up. Have a safe trip.
Hi Will, I’ve been reading your blog for a while now and thought it about time I introduced myself. Have a good trip and I look forward to hearing your thoughts about stories when you get back.
Will, all the best to you in your travels. Make sure to be polite to the TSA people at the airport! : )
Hey, being a scholar of narrative myself I find the subject super intriguing. Have you read the volume edited by Michael J. Hyde on the Ethos of Rhetoric? A primordialist understanding of Ethos as dwelling place (ground of being almost) rather than the more common ethos = character (credibility). It seems to me that with such an understanding we can speak about the ethos of narrative in ways similar to what you are describing here. I also have a friend here, Paul Turpin, who has done much work on ethics and narrative. I spoke to a friend in Boston just a few days ago about working that angle out! We’ve been working on conversion narratives and “complexifying” the relationship of conversion from looking at form to ethos as dwelling place. I look forward to talking with you more azbout this subject!
Best Regards!
Nacho
Thanks everyone for your best wishes! And thanks for your comments on stories.
Nacho: we must have a conversation some time. I’ll send you an e-mail. I’m intrigued by this matter of ethos as dwelling place or ground, and I think it might be very useful. I’ll try to get hold of the Ethos of Rhetoric book as well.
Best wishes,
Will
