What is narrative? Umberto Eco, of The Name
of the Rose fame, suggests that to tell a story or write a narrative you
have to construct a world. Yet, Eco’s suggestion, while helpful, needs to be
supplemented by another feature of story. Stories connect actions – narrative
creates causal relations between one action and another. Think about this. “She
sees a cow in the field” is not a narrative – “she sees a cow in the field and
milks it” is.
One
last feature of narrative, brought to light by Paul Ricoeur, is time. What is
recounted in narrative takes place in time and makes time. Stories have a
temporal component that is not to be missed or ignored if we are to better
understand them. But surely there are at least a few other important elements
of narrative: plot, point of view, characters, intrigue, suspense, and drama. I’d
wager all these dimensions require due consideration when reading the biblical stories.
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