Telling Stories: Postmodernism and the Invalidation of Traditional NarrativeMichael Roemer's groundbreaking work argues that every story, be it ancient myth or documentary film, is completed before we read or watch it. He explores why a society like ours - predicated on free will - is addicted to tales that neither we, nor the heroes, can control. Roemer argues that, contrary to both formalist and postmodern aesthetic theories, traditional stories do not create order out of chaos but challenge our order with chaos, undermining the structures we have built to protect ourselves. He finds that stories are both radical and conservative, invalidating our freedom while centering on heroes or heroines who are obliged to act alone; their adventures remove them from the sheltering community. Moreover, their attempt to escape the plot is mandated by the plot itself. Predicated on contradiction, ambiguity, and uncertainty, stories affirm what they deny - just as society both affirms and denies our existence as individuals. |
Contents
The Preclusive Form of Narrative | 3 |
Stories Connect Us | 11 |
Fictive Figures Must Think They Are Free | 19 |
Plot | 39 |
Plot and Necessity | 51 |
Plot and the Sacred | 57 |
The Desacralization of Story | 69 |
Story and Consciousness | 91 |
Traditional Story Is On the Right | 221 |
Invalidating the Privileged Realm | 233 |
The Rejection of Empathy | 241 |
The Invalidation of Experience | 249 |
Storytellers New and Old | 269 |
Popular Stories | 271 |
Four Storytellers and the Enlightened Tradition | 291 |
Henry James Postmodernist | 319 |
Story As Paradox | 107 |
Story Affirms What It Denies | 129 |
Postmodernism and Traditional Narrative | 155 |
We Have Always Been Positivists | 157 |
We Dont and Do Believe in Stories | 177 |
Postmodern Theory and Traditional Art | 185 |
Deconstruction Liberates and Enables | 195 |
Invalidating Traditional Aesthetics | 203 |
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Common terms and phrases
action Adorno aesthetic artist artwork audience aware Bänden Barthes become believe Bleak House C. G. Jung called cited Claude Lévi-Strauss clearly comedy consciousness contemporary contradictions critical culture death deconstruction Derrida Dickens E. M. Forster evil existence experience fate feel fiction fictive figure forces formalists freedom Friedrich Friedrich Nietzsche G. W. F. Hegel Goethe Heidegger helpless Henry James hero human Ibid Ibsen identity individual Karl Schlechta Lévi-Strauss lives longer Marx meaning melodrama myth narrative nature Nietzsche novel object Oedipus Oedipus Rex once ourselves past Perhaps Peter Brooks philosophy physical play plot Positivism Positivist postmodern predictable reality realm relationship render René Girard ritual role sacred safe arena says seems sense Sigmund Freud situation social society story's storyteller structures tell theory things tion traditional story tragedy tragic trans truth uncertainty unconscious undermine University Press Verlag Werner Heisenberg York
References to this book
The Accelerated Sublime: Landscape, Tourism, and Identity Claudia Bell,John Lyall No preview available - 2002 |