The Narrative Path

This book provides a perceptive analysis of the "narrative turn" that led Paul Ricoeur to his magisterial work "Time and Narrative. "Ricoeur has for many years explored the intersections of diverse strands of European philosophy, but it is his recent work that has attracted the most discussion and engendered the most debate in Europe and America. "The Narrative Path "explores the roots and meaning of that work. Two of the book's five essays reach back to Ricoeur's earlier work to clarify his themes: Richard Kearney concentrates on the role of imagination in hermeneuties, and Maria Villela Petit explores the development of Ricoeur's concept of history from "History and Truth "to "Time and Narrative." Two essays analyze the significance of Ricoeur's reflections on metaphoric and narrative language: Serge Mellinger looks at the relationship between time and poetry from the point of view of Ricoeur's discussions of the connection between time and narrative, and T. Peter Kemp extends Ricoeur's analysis to argue that narration is indispensable to ethics. The book concludes with a reflection by Ricoeur himself on the linguistic, practical, and ethical dimensions of human beings, and with a bibliography of Ricoeur's work in English. T. Peter Kemp teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Copenhagen. "The Narrative Path" is based on a special issue of the journal "Philosophy and Social Criticism, "edited by David Rasmussen, who is Professor of Philosophy at Boston College.

WHAT IS THE STORY GRID? The Story Grid is a tool developed by editor Shawn Coyne to analyze stories and provide helpful editorial comments. It's like a CT Scan that takes a photo of the global story and tells the editor or writer what is working, what is not, and what must be done to make what works better and fix what's not. The Story Grid breaks down the component parts of stories to identify the problems. And finding the problems in a story is almost as difficult as the writing of the story itself (maybe even more difficult). The Story Grid is a tool with many applications: 1. It will tell a writer if a Story ?works? or ?doesn't work. 2. It pinpoints story problems but does not emotionally abuse the writer, revealing exactly where a Story (not the person creating the Story'the Story) has failed. 3. It will tell the writer the specific work necessary to fix that Story's problems. 4. It is a tool to re-envision and resuscitate a seemingly irredeemable pile of paper stuck in an attic drawer. 5. It is a tool that can inspire an original creation.

Guided by the multifaceted relations between city and text, Charting Literary Urban Studies: Texts as Models of and for the City attempts to chart the burgeoning field of literary urban studies by outlining how texts in varying degrees function as both representations of the city and as blueprints for its future development. The study addresses questions such as these: How do literary texts represent urban complexities – and how can they capture the uniqueness of a given city? How do literary texts simulate layers of urban memory – and how can they reinforce or help dissolve path dependencies in urban development? What role can literary studies play in interdisciplinary urban research? Are the blueprints or 'recipes' for urban development that most quickly travel around the globe – such as the 'creative city', the 'green city' or the 'smart city' – really always the ones that best solve a given problem? Or is the global spread of such travelling urban models not least a matter of their narrative packaging? In answering these key questions, this book also advances a literary studies contribution to the general theory of models, tracing a heuristic trajectory from the analysis of literary texts as representations of urban developments to an analysis of literary strategies in planning documents and other pragmatic, non-literary texts.

This book takes the following question as its starting point: What are some of the crucial things the reader must do in order to make sense of a literary narrative? The book is a study of the texture of narrative fiction, using stylistics, corpus linguistic principles (especially Hoey’s work on lexical patterning), narratological ideas, and cognitive stylistic work by Werth, Emmott, and others. Michael Toolan explores the textual/grammatical nature of fictional narratives, critically re-examining foundational ideas about the role of lexical patterning in narrative texts, and also engages the cognitive or psychological processes at play in literary reading. The study grows out of the theoretical questions that stylistic analyses of extended fictional texts raise, concerning the nature of narrative comprehension and the reader’s experience in the course of reading narratives, and particularly concerning the role of language in that comprehension and experience. The ideas of situation, repetition and picturing are all central to the book’s argument about how readers process story, and Toolan also considers the ethical and emotional involvement of the reader, developing hypotheses about the text-linguistic characteristics of the most ethically and emotionally involving portions of the stories examined. This book makes an important contribution to the study of narrative text and is in dialogue with recent work in corpus stylistics, cognitive stylistics, and literary text and texture.

Not all who wander are lost… Paul thought he was on his way. From a small-town Connecticut kid to the most prestigious consulting firm in the world, he had everything he thought he wanted. Yet he decided to walk away and embark on the "real work" of his life - finding the work that matters and daring to create a life to support that. This Pathless Path is about finding yourself in the wrong life, and the real work of figuring out how to live. Through painstaking experiments, living in different countries, and contemplating the deepest questions about life, Paul pieces together a set of ideas and principles that guide him from unfulfilled and burned out to a life he is excited to keep living. The Pathless Path is not a how-to book filled with “hacks”; instead, it is a vulnerable account of Paul’s journey from leaving the socially accepted “default path” towards another, one focused on doing work that matters, finding the others, and defining your own success. This book is an ideal companion for people considering leaving their jobs, embarking on a new path, dealing with the uncertainty of an unconventional path, or looking to improve their relationship with work in a fast-changing world. Reader feedback: “It’s a rare book in that it is tangentially about careers and being more focused and productive, but unlike almost every other book I have read about these topics, I finished this one and felt better about myself and my career.” “The themes are timeless. The content is expertly written. The advice is refreshingly non-prescriptive.” “If you have questioned your own path, or a nagging lack of intention in your choices you need this book. If you have felt a gradual loss of agency in your direction you need this book. You are in the grip of an invisible script that was not written for you.” “The writing is fantastic - Paul's writing is approachably poetic; a quick read that weaves together his own experience moving from a 'default path' overachiever to a 'pathless path' seeker of passion and curiosity, deep research into the history of work and collections of perspectives from years of podcasting, friendship, conferences, and meetings with other 'alternative path' life-livers."

Narrative-Based Practice in Health and Social Care outlines a vision of how witnessing narratives, paying attention to them, and developing an ability to question them creatively, can make the person’s emerging story the central focus of health and social care, and of healing. This text gives an account of the practical application of ideas and skills from contemporary narrative studies to health and social care. Promoting narrative-based practice in everyday encounters with patients and clients, and in supervision, teaching, teamwork and management, it presents "Conversations Inviting Change," an established narrative-based model of interactional skills. Underpinned by an account of theory from narrative studies and related fields, including communication theory and systems thinking, it is written for students and practitioners across a broad range of professions in primary and secondary health care and social care. More information about "Conversations Inviting Change" is available at www.conversationsinvitingchange.com. This website includes podcasts, presentations and further teaching material as well as details of forthcoming courses, and is continually updated with information about the approach described in this book.

An elderly black woman who lives out in the country makes the long and arduous journey into town, as she has done many times in the past.