Wrote essays using experience and the process of thinking to organize information For Montaigne narrative was a mode of discoverya way to move through a problem one step at a time His essays are challenging and thought provoking and this is largely due to his ability to draw his reader in ID: 711875
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Slide1
Narrative EssaysSlide2
Michel de Montaigne
Wrote essays using experience and the process of thinking to organize information.
For Montaigne, narrative was a mode of discovery—a way to move through a problem one step at a time.
His essays are challenging and thought provoking, and this is largely due to his ability to draw his reader into the story.Slide3
Narrative as Academic Writing
Typically, we use the “thesis-proof” structure in academic writing:
“X is true because of Y and Z.”
But how much of even a research essay is built using a narrative structure
?
Can we think of the “thesis-proof” structure as a form of narrative?Slide4
Markers of Narrative
Narrator
Time
Place
CausalitySlide5
From, “Why Did God Make Flies?”
by Richard
Conniff
A fly is standing on the rim of my beer glass as I write these words. Its vast, mosaic eyes look simultaneously lifeless and mocking. It grooms itself methodically, its forelegs twining together like the arms of a Sybarite luxuriating in bath oil. Its hind legs twitch across the upper surface of its wings. It pauses, well-fed and at rest, to contemplate
the sweetness of life.
We are lucky enough to live in an era when scientists quantify such things, and so as I type and wait my turn to drink, I know that the fly is neither busy nor curious; the female spends 40.6 percent of her time doing nothing but contemplating the sweetness of life. I know that she not only eats unspeakable things, but that she spends an additional 29.7 percent of her time spitting them back up again and blowing bubbles with her vomit. The male is slightly less assiduous at this deplorable pastime, but one diligent researcher has reported that a well-fed fly may also defecate every four and a half minutes. Flies seldom trouble us as a health threat anymore, at least in the developed world, but they are capable of killing. And when we are dead (or sooner, in some cases), they dine on our corrupted flesh.Slide6
Narrative as a Writing Device
Audience
Purpose
How much of my writing voice will rely upon narrative?Slide7
Writing a Narrative
Tell
a story – how does a narrative develop over time
? (Time)
Introduce character – who is the narrator?
(Narrator)
Make a point – what effect caused what result
? (Causality)
Report details – Where is the narrative set
? (Place)