ABSTRACT
Narratives are retrospective, interpretive compositions that express former events in the light of actual understanding and the evaluation of their meaning. According to classical narratology, narratives need to have a beginning, middle, and an ending. However, classical narratology researchers, who primarily study literature and this view, were challenged by modernists like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, who undermined the idea of progressive time lines in narratives. Narrative inquiry can seem very subjective, as a study of the individual, but the narratives created by the individual always draw on cultural discourses. Narrative inquiry is an approach to the study of human lives conceived as a way of honoring lived experience as a source of important knowledge and understanding; narrative inquiry is a way of understanding experience. Health and illness research are areas where narrative work is increasing. “Dominant discourses” or “master narratives” are also taken up in a type of discourse analysis called “positioning theory”.
