Narrative approaches to peace and conflict transformation begin from the understanding that narrative is a process that shapes the world around us. Sometimes we are in control of the narrative, and other times we aren’t. Our personal narratives are caught up in broader narratives of our families, our workplaces, our communities, and our countries.
Every day, we live our lives through story. In our conversations, our entertainment, our meetings, and our dreams, we are exposed to the building blocks of narrative—and we take them up for our own ends, too.
Narrative is not merely a tool, however, though we can learn how to become better and more constructive storytellers.
Rather, narrative is the world we live in, a delicate dance between language, symbol, meaning, and action. While we cannot escape it, we can strive to better understand its opportunities and its challenges, its capacities and its limits.
What is a “narrative themography”?
This “narrative themography” is meant to be a place for anyone who is curious about narrative to begin to understand the building blocks of narrative and the craft of storytelling. To understand the serious impact that stories have on our world, we have to take the craft of storytelling seriously.
This themography pulls together vivid and instructive excerpts from across the study and practice of storytelling. These excerpts are meant to spark curiosity and help us expand our understanding of narrative transformation by expanding our understanding of narrative writ large.
This narrative themography is not a glossary, though it may seem like it at first. Rather than providing hard-and-fast definitions of key narrative terms and concepts, this themography seeks to continuously collate knowledge and ideas about narrative from across the worlds of academia and art.
How to use this resource
This themography is meant to be used by anyone who is curious about what scholars and storytellers have to say about narrative. It is meant to be useful for both those new to narrative studies and those who have been studying narrative for a long time.
Use this themography as a starting point for your own inquiry into narrative. Use it to get an idea of some of the key sources you might want to use in your study of narrative. Use it to confirm or expand your understandings of narrative terminology—and use it to offer critique where you think it is due.
A note on methodology
This narrative themography is a perpetual work in progress.
The curation of this narrative themography is undertaken in three phases. First, texts (e.g., books, articles, lectures) that concern the phenomenon of narrative are excerpted, with major arguments and core concepts pulled out. Then, these excerpts are analyzed and placed under themes organized around the subjects of narrative and story. Finally, these thematized documents are then reviewed, and particularly vivid, clear, or curiosity-inducing passages are pulled out for inclusion in the themography.
The methodology is, in short, a little bit science, a little bit art.
It is carried out by a team of TNT Lab researchers working together and using their own subjective understandings to make decisions about which concepts might be most useful to consider for narrative transformers who take both storytelling and its impact on the world seriously.
This narrative themography is being regularly updated by TNT Lab’s team of researchers. The next round of updates will be made in Spring 2024. If you have any suggestions of sources, terms, or concepts we should include, get in touch with us.
Credits
TNT Lab would like to thank the following researchers for their work on building this narrative themography:
- Hannah Schmutzer, Undergraduate Research Intern (Fall 2022–Fall 2023)
- Nicole Struzinsky, Undergraduate Research Intern (Fall 2022–Spring 2023)
- Ella Jackson, Undergraduate Research Intern (Spring 2023)
- Jaylin Barrett, Undergraduate Research Intern (Spring 2023–Fall 2023)
- Nayeon Kim, Undergraduate Research Intern (Spring 2024)
- Christina Illiano, Undergraduate Research Intern (Spring 2024)
- Roheena Hasanzade, Undergraduate Research Intern (Spring 2024)
Bibliography
(as of December 2022)
Bruner, Jerome. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.
Carriger, Gail. The Heroine’s Journey: For Writers, Readers, and Fans of Pop Culture. Gail Carriger LLC, 2020.
Egri, Lajos. The Art of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives. New York: Touchstone, 1942.
Field, Syd. Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting. New York: Baltam Dell, 2005.
Forster, E. M. Aspects of the Novel. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1927.
Frye, Northrop. The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1981.
Mantel, Hilary. “Reith Lectures.” BBC: Radio 4, 2017.
Jasper, James, Michael P. Young, and Elke Zuern. Public Characters: The Politics of Reputation and Blame. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020.
McKee, Robert. Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York, ReganBooks, 2014.
Propp, Vladimir. The Morphology of the Folktale. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1968.
Tilly, Charles. Why?. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.
Yorke, John. Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey into Story. New York: Abrams Press, 2015.