ABSTRACT
Rita Charon has developed a narrative approach to representation which takes the form of personal, reflective writing that complements her clinical notes. The movement between research conversations, interpretations and representations is analogous to a musical performance in which the musician brings interpretive capacities to the composition in order to capture the music and convey some sense of its spirit and meaning. According to David Lodge, the 'non-fiction', or biographical novel, 'takes a real person and their real history as the subject matter for imaginative exploration, using the novel's techniques for representing subjectivity rather than the objective evidence-based discourse of biography'. The representation of material from research interviews and conversations in poetic form has become increasingly popular within human sciences such as ethnography and counselling/psychotherapy. A key issue in narrative research is whether stories are regarded as knowledge in their own right or as raw material or data for subsequent analysis.
