Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for Narrative Gravity by Rukmini Bhaya Nair - Available

Narrative Gravity

by Rukmini Bhaya Nair
ebook
Read a sample Read a sample
Human beings have always been compulsive storytellers, inventing narratives in cultures and societies across the world. In this book, Rukmini Bhaya Nair asks why we feel compelled to fabricate stories in this way. Extending current research in cognitive science and narratology, the author argues that we seem to have an innate genetic drive to lie and fabricate as a way of gaining the competitive advantages such fictions give us, both individually and collectively. She suggests that stories are a means of fusing causal and logical explanations of 'real' events with emotional recognition, so that the lessons taught to us as children, and then throughout our lives via stories, lay the cornerstones of our most crucial beliefs. A natural and essential part of our ordinary conversations and our lives, the speech act of narrative appears central to the construction of our identities. Nair's conclusion is that our stories really do make us up, just as much as we make up our stories.
This elegantly written and theoretically sophisticated work is essential reading for students of linguistics, philosophy and literary theory - and for anyone who tells, reads, or listens to stories.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • PDF ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English