Week 4 - Finishing up Storytelling, Narratives, and Metaphors

Disenchantment

• Modern world understood as something that can be explained, calculated, controlled.

• We gain prediction and control

Enchantment

• A mood of being struck, absorbed, moved by the world and affected.

• They way of being fuels ethical, empathetic and care.

Biomedicine

Body = Seen as machine, data set, metrics

Re-enchantment

• Through story, art, attention → restores wonder and meaning to bodies and care.

Frank’s Illness Narratives

• The “Ill person’s story” is an ancient narrative genre.

• Often takes form of written autobiography or memoir.

What are Frank’s 3 Major types of patterns?

• Restitution (Cure)

• Chaos

• Quest

Restitution (Cure) Narrative

• Illness as a temporary detour; body is restorable

• Primary goal is permanent returning to normal health and health.

• Most simple form

• “I got sick from treatment, and then I got better”

• Doesn’t really change a person.

Chaos Narrative

• Illness as a permanent state of disorder → will get worse w/ no redeeming virtues.

• Anxiety-provoking

• Ill person isn’t in control of illness.

• Strong personal and cultural dislike of stories

• Illness happens, things get worse, we die.

Quest Narrative

• Illness as an opportunity to transform oneself or one’s relationship to disease.

• Unlike restitution and chaos, illness is seen as something transformative.

• Can be therapeutic. You still get something out of it, and may come out to be better.

• There’s change (usually comes out better)

What are the 3 typical events of the quest narrative?

1. Departure (the “Call of the Symptom)

2. Initiation (a “Road of trials”) → Trials or treatment

3. Return (out of crisis, but marked by illness)

Literal Language

• Words in their primary, non-figurative sense; what’s actually written, as opposed to what’s implied.

• “I’m very hungry” → It’s deadahh

Figurative Language

• Language which uses figures of speech (eg: metaphor or simile)

• “I could eat a horse” → It’s NOT deadahh

Poetics

• How a text’s elements synthesizes to produce effects on the reader (to affect the reader)

• Includes figures of speech

• Making or bringing into being

• How textual elements like plot. story, character, etc. Produces effects on reader. How a text is built.

• How we create smth.

Aesthetics

• Sensation or perception

• Experience and judgement: What happens when we encounter something as ugly, beautiful moving?