ABSTRACT
The recent depth of interest in narrative shown by the human sciences sees in it a natural form for the human mind to apprehend reality as lived experience, regarding it, as we have seen, as ‘a primary act of mind’. Paul Ricoeur has shown us how the principal property of a narrative is its sequentiality, its meaning being constructed from the overall configuration of a sequence of events, whether these events be real or imaginary (Bruner, 1990, pp. 43-44). Moreover, White has argued (1981) that to create a narrative is inherently to make a plea for moral legitimacy. As Bruner puts it: ‘To tell a story is inescapably to take a moral stance, even if it is a moral stance against moral stances’ (1990, p. 51).
