ABSTRACT
We will not go far wrong in equating a ‘narrative’ with a ‘story’, so long as we are not immediately insistent that a ‘story’ is something with a beginning, middle, and end, in such a strong sense as to sustain its overall coherence. Perhaps the archetypal story is of this character, but not all stories begin on a new dawn and end with a satisfying completeness. Many, as we finish the last page or watch the last scene or film-roll, are simply adjourned; they are nonetheless stories. Alternatively (to concede to the strong sense of the term), they are incomplete, unfinished stories-but they remain stories for all that, rather than something else. And what makes them stories is that they are purposeful accounts of continuous events. It is true there are many types of story, one of the major distinctions being between factual and fictional ones. But what enables us to subsume them all under the term ‘story’ is that at the minimum, and necessarily, they assume the narrative form. They narrate events.
