Telling stories, storytelling events.

Reading this article by Robert A. Georges has indicated to me that I might be going about my research the wrong way, in terms of the keywords I am using for searching. Storytelling seems to almost unanimously refer to verbal storytelling, rather than written narrative. I like the term ‘storytelling’ because it implies a conversation, and blogs are a space that foster conversation, through the comments section and on other platforms (Twitter, Facebook, etc). Perhaps, though, I need to focus more on researching written narrative, or at least determining what I mean by ‘story’ and conversation in the context of this thesis.

In saying that, there were a number of points made in this paper that I found really useful. Blogs, after all, don’t exist in the same space or tradition as other forms of writing. They are more immediate, but also more public and persistant than traditional writing.

Georges discusses the fact that storytelling emerged among the “Greek literati of later antiquity,” as emerged “stories through which men described the workings of their univresity and narrated exploits of members of their species” (313). This is a great quote for supporting the idea that storytelling is something that comes to us almost naturally (if not intrinsically!). Indeed, as time passed, it became evident that the “universality of storytelling was accepted a priori” (313).

Stories have, evidently, been an important element of human cognition for some time.

As I have attested many times in notes here, and in my own draft writing, storytelling is so vitally important because it offers a frame through which to view the world and make sense of experience and circumstance. Georges echoes this, noting,

…that stories can reflect cultural reality or distort it, that they can reinforce the social structure and contribute to social cohesion or weaken the social structure and threaten social cohesion, that they can funciton as conditioning mechanisms and instruments of social control or as escape mechanisms and instruments of social criticism (315).

So, stories are important not just on an individual level, but on a societal level too. Of course, being a part of a social or cultural collective contributes to personal identity, so effectively these broader scale society stories are also stories that help to inform personal growth & development, too.

Georges outlines a number of points that he sees as the framework for understanding & determining storytelling events. Of course, he is talking about verbal storytelling, but many elements, as I mentioned, echo the case of blogging. Another thing to keep in mind is that we are increasingly conducting what would have previously been verbal, face-to-face communication, via the Internet (i.e. making use of the written word). This article was penned in 1969 so it’s only fitting to interpret Georges’ reading of storytelling events to fit the present-day situation.

Georges’ “postulates” for storytelling events:

1. Every storytelling event is a communicative event.

2. Every storytelling event is a social experience.

3. Every storytelling event is unique.

4. Storytelling events exhibit degrees and kinds of similarities (317-319).

Georges obviously goes in to quite a bit of detail, and I’m not going to read it now, but there are some interesting points make about the way that storytellers relate to their audience, which echoes symbolic interactionism & Goffman, to a degree, so it is worth revisiting this article as I write.

Further on, Georges recognises the relationship between stories and literature (whilst still regarding them as separate entities). He writes:

…stories are usually regarded as the unwritten counterparts of written or literary narratives, with which it is felt they share common formal features and narrative devices…but with which it is felt they differ (322).

They differ for a variety of means, but Georges seems to imply that oral narratives are the mechanism of the underprivileged and less educated (322). He goes on to say:

Thought it is possible to draw analogies between written narratives and the messages of storytelling events, the same criteria cannot be utilized to judge both, nor can both be subjected to the same kinds of study and analysis (323).

Now… this might sound strange, but in the couple of years that I have been researching narrative, this is really the first time that I have pondered the notion that storytelling might be a term reserved for oral communication only. I do wonder though, as I have mentioned, whether the context of communication now is such that this definition is open to interpretation and re-working. The fact is simply that we do not communicate face-to-face anywhere near as much as we used to (or, more correctly, anywhere near as exclusively).

To finish off with, a couple of passages that I think ring true for my research, even if they aren’t dealing with written narrative:

The message of a storytelling event has no existence “outside” the storytelling event itself. It is not some “thing” that is merely used within differing contexts, for the mssage of a storytelling event exists only in terms of and because of the individuals whose selection of the social identities of storyteller and story listener entitles them to enjoy socially prescribed statuses and whose choices among the alternatives presribed by these identity relationships and status relationships result in the genreation and communication of a message that is simply one aspect of an integral whole from which it and every other aspect of the storytelling event are inseparable (323).

And:

Certainly, as an individual performs the duties presribed by the social identity of storyteller, selected from among the multiple social identities of his old persona, he formulates a message that grows out of messages stored in his memory as a result of past experience (324).

I really like this idea that everything that we do, all the stories that we form, tag on to our existing stories and understanding to become this sort of cumulative database of knowledge and awareness. Having a blog certainly helps with this: stories are kept, easily referred back to thanks to archives and tags, and we can build upon our life narratives as we go.

 

reference: Georges, Robert A. (1969), ‘Toward an understanding of storytelling events’. The Journal of American Folklore 82 (326), pp. 313-328

[annotated copy saved to Zotero]

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