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Dangers of Narrative and Fictionality

A Rhetorical Approach to Storytelling in Contemporary Western Culture

by Samuli Björninen (Volume editor) Pernille Meyer (Volume editor) Maria Mäkelä (Volume editor) Henrik Zetterberg-Nielsen (Volume editor)
Edited Collection 294 Pages
Open Access

Available soon

Summary

The 21st-century story economy is grounded on the premise that everyone – from individual social media users to political parties and multinational corporations – needs to become storytellers. At the same time, we witness the erosion of borders between fact, fiction, truth and lies within the public sphere. This book by literary researchers helps different audiences understand and analyse the rhetorical uses and potential dangers of narratives and fictionality. The contributors deal with various contemporary storytelling environments, ranging from social and news media to literary autofiction, and from documentary narration to sexual fantasy. Narratives and fictionality are an asset in today’s communication environments, but awareness of their rhetorical and ethical pitfalls will make us better readers.

Details

Pages
294
ISBN (PDF)
9783631894750
ISBN (ePUB)
9783631894767
DOI
10.3726/b21221
Open Access
CC-BY
Language
English
Keywords
Storytelling Rhetoric Narrative theory Fictionality studies Literary studies Dangers of Narrative and Fictionality
Published
Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, 2024. 294 pp., 4 fig. b/w.

Biographical notes

Samuli Björninen (Volume editor) Pernille Meyer (Volume editor) Maria Mäkelä (Volume editor) Henrik Zetterberg-Nielsen (Volume editor)

Samuli Björninen is a researcher in Comparative Literature at Tampere University, Finland, and a postdoctoral fellow at Aarhus University, Denmark. His postdoctoral research focuses on developing story-critical methods for interdisciplinary narrative studies and theorising the rhetorical use of factuality in narratives. Pernille Meyer is a PhD student in Scandinavian Language and Literature at Aarhus University, Denmark. Her PhD project concerns second-person narratives in Danish literature and draws on theoretical areas such as rhetorical fictionality theory and diachronic narratology. Maria Mäkelä is Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at Tampere University, Finland. Her research focuses on the story economy; the neoliberal logic of narrative and fiction; narrative exemplarity; consciousness, voice and realism across media; adultery in fiction; authorial ethos; and critical applications of postclassical narratologies. Henrik Zetterberg-Nielsen is Professor of Fictionality Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. His research has attempted to contribute to conversations about three areas of narrative theory: first-person narration, unnatural narratology and fictionality. His current project is on human sexuality and the roles of imagination and fictionality in human sexual practices and preferences.

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Title: Dangers of Narrative and Fictionality