Narration, life and meaning in history and fiction

Abstract

This article addresses two subjects relating to the topic of this issue of Scandinavian Journal of History from a ‘difference approach’ in narratology. This means that we assume that words like ‘narrative’ and ‘fiction’ are used to denote different things and that it is important to distinguish between these uses. We also assume that narrative texts that share similar surface structures can still ‘do’ different things and are approached differently by readers. The first issue we focus on concerns history writing and narrative. We are especially interested in the discussion about the distinction between narrative history writing and literary fiction. When discussing this issue, we distinguish between different uses of terms like ‘narrative’, ‘fictiveness’, and ‘fiction’. The second issue concerns the application of narratology as a method in the analysis of oral and written texts. We suggest that narratological concepts like narrator and perspective do not have the same denotation in the analysis of literary fiction as in the analysis of non-fictional narratives, and hence that narratology with its many concepts cannot be applied indiscriminately. In the discussion of these issues, we refer to factual and fictional written and oral texts concerned with migration.