Rhetoric, Narrative, and the Rhetoric of Narratives: Exploring the Turns to Narrative in Recent thought and Discourses

This investigation of narrative in a variety of disciplines offers more than a survey. If the current intense interest in narrative represents yet another example of Romantic subjectivity asserting its claims against Enlightenment rationalism, then it is merely faddish. A deeper account of narrative's significance is being made, however. It insists that there is no non-narrative way of apprehending reality. For actions to be intelligible they require location in a coherent tradition. Such traditions are sustained by master narratives. Hence, narrative analysis challenges the very distinction between public rationality and private subjectivity; is anti-foundationalist and relativist: and recognises the plurality and particularity of major narrative traditions. Treating postmodernism, communications theory, disputes about non-narrative modes of discourse, and the fragmented character of contemporary narrative-based communities, the author focuses attention on what is genuinely revolutionary in the turn toward "story." Such theorists as Frederic Jameson, Alasdair Maclntyre, James Gustafson, John Milbank, and Hayden White are discussed.