Narrative Factuality

The study of narrative—the object of the rapidly growing discipline of narratology—has been traditionally concerned with the fictional narratives of literature, such as novels or short stories. But narrative is a transdisciplinary and transmedial concept whose manifestations encompass both the fictional and the factual. In this volume, which provides a companion piece to Tobias Klauk and Tilmann Köppe’s Fiktionalität: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, the use of narrative to convey true and reliable information is systematically explored across media, cultures and disciplines, as well as in its narratological, stylistic, philosophical, and rhetorical dimensions. At a time when the notion of truth has come under attack, it is imperative to reaffirm the commitment to facts of certain types of narrative, and to examine critically the foundations of this commitment. But because it takes a background for a figure to emerge clearly, this book will also explore nonfactual types of narratives, thereby providing insights into the nature of narrative fiction that could not be reached from the narrowly literary perspective of early narratology.

Factual Fictions: Narrative Truth and the Contemporary American Documentary Novel focuses on contemporary American documentary narratives, specifically the documentary novel, as it re-emerged in the 1960s and later developed into various other forms. The book explores the connections between the documentary novel and the concurrent rise of New Journalism (a.k.a. “literary journalism”) in the United States, situating the two genres in the cultural context of the tumultuous 1960s and an emerging postmodern ethos. Flis makes a comprehensive analysis of texts by Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, John Berendt, and Don DeLillo, while tackling discussions on various theoretical complexities with assurance and rigor. Interested in the precarious divide between fact and fiction, the author productively complicates traditional notions of the two poles. Furthermore, the book examines parallels between contemporary Slovene documentary narratives and their American counterparts. Flis’s work, with its systematic and innovative approach to the subject matter, adds an important historical dimension to the developing field of literary journalism studies as well as to the more established area of 20th Century American literature.

Concerned with the nature of the medium and the borders between fact and fiction, reflexivity was a ubiquitous feature of modernist and postmodernist literature and film. While in the wake of the post-postmodern “return to the real” cultural criticism has little time for discussions of reflexivity, it remains a key topic in narratology, as does fictionality. The latter is commonly defined opposition to the real and the factual, but remains conditioned by historical, cultural, discursive, and medium-related factors. Reflexivity blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction, however, by giving fiction a factual edge or by questioning the limits of factuality in non-fictional discourses. Fictionality, factuality, and reflexivity thus constitute a complex triangle of concepts, yet they are rarely considered together. This volume fills this gap by exploring the intricacies of their interactions and interdependence in philosophy, literature, film, and digital media, providing insights into a broad range of their manifestations from the ancient times to today, from East Asia through Europe to the Americas.

Concerned with the nature of the medium and the borders between fact and fiction, reflexivity was a ubiquitous feature of modernist and postmodernist literature and film. While in the wake of the post-postmodern “return to the real” cultural criticism has little time for discussions of reflexivity, it remains a key topic in narratology, as does fictionality. The latter is commonly defined opposition to the real and the factual, but remains conditioned by historical, cultural, discursive, and medium-related factors. Reflexivity blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction, however, by giving fiction a factual edge or by questioning the limits of factuality in non-fictional discourses. Fictionality, factuality, and reflexivity thus constitute a complex triangle of concepts, yet they are rarely considered together. This volume fills this gap by exploring the intricacies of their interactions and interdependence in philosophy, literature, film, and digital media, providing insights into a broad range of their manifestations from the ancient times to today, from East Asia through Europe to the Americas.

Narrative Truthiness presents a new model for understanding truth and shows how a specific vein of postmodern writing engages with the overall goal of enhancing our interpretations of the complexities of the human experience.

In this book Marina Lambrou explores the dimension of narrative storytelling described as ‘the disnarrated’ – events that do not happen but which are referred to – across three genres of texts: personal narratives; news stories; and fiction (literary and film). The book begins by asking why such disnarrated narratives are nevertheless considered tellable. It moves on to examine the pervasiveness of this phenomenon in news reports about “near misses” and the shared personal narratives about dangerous experiences, where “truth” is expected to be central their telling. It further discusses how disnarration is generated in counterfactual “what if?” scenarios in fiction where characters follow alternative, forked paths with fascinating unexpected consequences. This engaging work offers original insights to anyone interested in storytelling and will appeal in particular to scholars of language and literature, stylistics, narratology, media, film and journalism.

From Nobel Prize–winning economist and New York Times bestselling author Robert Shiller, a groundbreaking account of how stories help drive economic events—and why financial panics can spread like epidemic viruses Stories people tell—about financial confidence or panic, housing booms, or Bitcoin—can go viral and powerfully affect economies, but such narratives have traditionally been ignored in economics and finance because they seem anecdotal and unscientific. In this groundbreaking book, Robert Shiller explains why we ignore these stories at our peril—and how we can begin to take them seriously. Using a rich array of examples and data, Shiller argues that studying popular stories that influence individual and collective economic behavior—what he calls "narrative economics"—may vastly improve our ability to predict, prepare for, and lessen the damage of financial crises and other major economic events. The result is nothing less than a new way to think about the economy, economic change, and economics. In a new preface, Shiller reflects on some of the challenges facing narrative economics, discusses the connection between disease epidemics and economic epidemics, and suggests why epidemiology may hold lessons for fighting economic contagions.