ABSTRACT
Authors create stories for a bewildering variety of reasons. A mother spins a fanciful bedtime tale to lull her young child asleep; a rabbi crafts an elegant anecdote to illustrate the generosity of God; a distressed young woman writes a novel to heal the grief she feels over losing her mother. And not only do authors write for many different reasons, they often pursue many goals at once in their writing. Shakespeare wrote works that both illuminate the human condition and delight the ear; Jonathan Swift wrote stories that were both entertaining adventures and biting social commentary on the England of his day. The goals and purposes of storytelling are as diverse and varied as human intellect itself.
