ABSTRACT
The Routledge Companion to Narrative Theory brings together top scholars in the field to explore the significance of narrative to pressing social, cultural, and theoretical issues. How does narrative both inform and limit the way we think today? From conspiracy theories and social media movements to racial politics and climate change future scenarios, the reach is broad. This volume is distinctive for addressing the complicated relations between the interdisciplinary narrative turn in the academy and the contemporary boom of instrumental storytelling in the public sphere. The scholars collected here explore new theories of causality, experientiality, and fictionality; challenge normative modes of storytelling; and offer polemical accounts of narrative fiction, nonfiction, and video games. Drawing upon the latest research in areas from cognitive sciences to complexity theory, the volume provides an accessible entry point for those new to the myriad applications of narrative theory and a point of departure for new scholarship.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|60 pages
Narrative and Its Others
part II|48 pages
Narrative and the Public Sphere
chapter 5|15 pages
What is “the narrative”?
part III|60 pages
Narrative and Social Media
chapter 10|15 pages
Quantified storytelling
part IV|41 pages
Narrative Truth
chapter 12|14 pages
Legal Facts, Affective Truths, and Changing Narratives in Trials Involving Sexual Assault
chapter 14|13 pages
Playing Games With the Truth
part V|52 pages
Narrative and the Novel
part VI|56 pages
Narrative and Selfhood
chapter 21|14 pages
Toward a Rhetorical Narrative Medicine
chapter 22|14 pages
Reading Celebrity Autofiction
part VII|40 pages
Narrative and Social Change
part VIII|42 pages
Narrative and Cognition
part IX|54 pages
Narrative and Complex Systems
chapter 30|10 pages
Perspectives on causality in sciences and art
chapter 32|15 pages
Storytelling and Narrative Capital in Organizations
part X|64 pages
Narrative and International Relations
part XI|42 pages
Narrative and the Environment