Description
This paper focuses on the narrative cues for distance and closeness in illness narratives based on Paul Ricoeur’s theory of narrative. As a theoretical framework for narrative medicine, Ricoeur’s triple-mimesis is mainly known for three reasons (Ricoeur): First, his model suits the challenge faced by patients and doctors of comprehending the traces left behind by suffering since his hermeneutical phenomenology presupposes a stage of latent, invisible, and pre-narrative experience. As such, the heuristic model revolves arounds the ethics of “untold stories” that need to be heard (Charon 74, see 138-39). Second, the division of pre-, con-, and re-figuration roughly matches the three stages of practice in narrative medicine consisting of close reading, prompted writing, and dialogue as well as other interview styles (Russo). Third and crucially, narrative composition (variously called by Ricoeur emplotment, configuration, or mimesis II) brings about a reflective distance that is said to enhance therapeutic effect (Charalambous, Papadopoulos and Beadsmoore). What is less well known is that emplotment in Ricoeur’s mimesis extends to (the evocation of) closeness as well, namely through peripeteia (sudden changes in life narratives). The paper examines how peripeteia applies to certain moments of (life-changing) diagnosis in illness narratives, how such unexpected reversals disrupt narrative coherence to emotive effects, and how it matches what Arthur Frank called “chaos narratives” in life writing (Frank).| Period | 2022 Oct 4 |
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| Event title | Nordic network for narratives in medicine, 2022: Ranges of proximity: approaching narratives in medicine |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Lund, SwedenShow on map |
Free keywords
- illness narratives
- life writing
- proximity/ distance
- Paul Ricoeur