Fiction, History, Myth: Notes toward the Discrimination of Narrative Forms

Berthoff, Warner

doi:10.4159/harvard.9780674733183.c13

Cited by 37 publications

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“…One of the points of departure in my study was, in fact, Louis Mink's discussion about narrative autonomy in historiography (Mink 1978). The same subject has been discussed by scholars like Hayden White (1973White ( , 1978White ( , 1980White ( , 1984White ( , 1986White ( , 1989, Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. (1995), Warner Berthoff (1970), Lionel Gossman (1978), Paul Ricoeur (1984Ricoeur ( , 1985Ricoeur ( , 1988, et cetera. One of the problems that has dominated the discussion is this: When historical items are narrativized, these items are transformed into motifs with a function in a compositional whole (they are related temporarily, causally, et cetera) governed by a theme.…”

Section: The Autonomy Of Narratives and Their Relative Resistance To mentioning

confidence: 85%

A narratologist's Critical Reflections on Synchronic Studies of the Bible: A Response to Gregory T. K. Wong

Andersen¹

2007

Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament

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It is common that "synchronists" claim that the book of Judges is a meaningful and coherent text. Some of them even describe it as a coherent narrative, that is, a narrative with a plot. They then draw the conclusion that these suggested patterns or structures so to speak "reinterpret" or "overnarrativize" the individual stories and motifs in these stories, which thereby are given both new functions and new meanings. However, there is a logical lapsus in this reasoning that relates to a theoretical issue: Given the relative autonomy of narratives and, as a consequence, their relative resistance to reworking, can such assumed effects be achieved, and how, if this were the case, can it be done? My conclusion, based on theoretical arguments and an analysis of the book of Judges, is that these stories and their motifs cannot be transformed in the way synchronic scholars suggest.

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