The Thought-Provoking Power of Narration

Abstract

After a time of theoretical condemnation common sense as well as academic curiosity have rediscovered again the all-permeating powers of narration. Narrativity and culture are, this is a conviction grounding this essay, closely interwoven. But from this doesn’t follow that narration has to be seen as a guardian of general order. On the contrary, if we contemplate the appearance of narratives in everyday life and in literature we may detect differences but also affinities in subverting common beliefs. Yet, literary narrations tend to work in their own way through what in philosophical discourse is reduced to conceptualizing. The topics dealt with in this essay include Schiller’s substantiation of aesthetic awareness and Goethe’s narrative response; the great master-narratives of the 20th century: Proust, Joyce and Beckett; and the question, what an advanced art of narration can contribute to an experience which is yearning to break open the iron cage of traditions in thought as well as in literary invention.