Book part: Telling Stories about Storytelling
Abstract
Unlike describing, analysing, commanding or formalising, telling/narrating is the basic conscious operation of creating meaning in cognition as well as in communication. Therefore, narrating is an indispensable operation which at the same time performs and reveals the intrinsic mediality of our relation to the (our) world. Consequently, narration is a crucial topic of every media theory. Narrating is our most prominent and familiar way of constructing our experiential reality. Regarding the interrelation between event, narration, and story this means that stories do not at all represent events: instead, something becomes an event by and through the constructive operations of narrators. Stories can therefore be defined as meaning constructing reactions to experienced events. The papers analyses constellations of narrating, the relation between narrating, remembering and the construction of identity, and some of the functions of narrating for individuals as well as for societies. At the end, the paper considers why and how experimental literature disappoints the general expectation that literature has to tell stories and nothing else.
Preferred Citation
BibTex
Schmidt, Siegfried J.: Telling Stories about Storytelling. In: Gächter, Yvonne;Ortner, Heike;Schwarz, Claudia;Wiesinger, Andreas: Erzählen – Reflexionen im Zeitalter der Digitalisierung / Storytelling – Reflections in the Age of Digitalization. Innsbruck: Innsbruck University Press 2008, S. 17-28. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/19806.
@INCOLLECTION{Schmidt2008,
 author = {Schmidt, Siegfried J.},
 title = {Telling Stories about Storytelling},
 year = 2008,
 doi = "\url{http://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/19806}",
 editor = {Gächter, Yvonne and Ortner, Heike and Schwarz, Claudia and Wiesinger, Andreas},
 address = {Innsbruck},
 booktitle = {Erzählen – Reflexionen im Zeitalter der Digitalisierung / Storytelling – Reflections in the Age of Digitalization},
 pages = {17--28},
 publisher = {Innsbruck University Press},
}
 author = {Schmidt, Siegfried J.},
 title = {Telling Stories about Storytelling},
 year = 2008,
 doi = "\url{http://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/19806}",
 editor = {Gächter, Yvonne and Ortner, Heike and Schwarz, Claudia and Wiesinger, Andreas},
 address = {Innsbruck},
 booktitle = {Erzählen – Reflexionen im Zeitalter der Digitalisierung / Storytelling – Reflections in the Age of Digitalization},
 pages = {17--28},
 publisher = {Innsbruck University Press},
}
Keywords
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