ABSTRACT
In order to understand better the essence of storytelling, take as a starting-point the distinction made by Bruner between non-fiction and fiction. Two fundamentally different but complementary approaches to ordering experience and constructing a view of the world are contrasted and compared. The first is the paradigmatic, logico-scientific view, which is concerned with the establishment of truth, objectively verifiable. This position is characteristic of the scientific essay. The second, more the province of the poet or the storyteller, is concerned, not with objective truth, but with lifelikeness. Well-formed argument, that is, is contrasted with literary fiction: poem, play, or novel (Bruner 1986).
