Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-Narratology - Tapa dura

"Arthur Frank is a beautiful writer and this is a terrific book. His socio-narratology, while clearly drawing on the work of earlier scholars, is genuinely original, and his mastery of narrative theory, facility with a range of theoretical traditions of narrative analysis, deep fondness for literature, and capacity as a storyteller - all these together allow him to make a very persuasive case." - Cheryl Mattingly, University of Southern California"

Stories accompany us through life from birth to death. But they do not merely entertain, inform, or distress us - they show us what counts as right or wrong and teach us who we are and who we can imagine being. Stories connect people, but they can also disconnect, creating boundaries between people and justifying violence. In "Letting Stories Breathe", Arthur W. Frank grapples with this fundamental aspect of our lives, offering both a theory of how stories shape us and a useful method for analyzing them. Along the way he also tells stories: from folktales to research interviews to remembrances. Frank's unique approach uses literary concepts to ask social scientific questions: how do stories make life good and when do they endanger it? Going beyond theory, he presents a thorough introduction to dialogical narrative analysis, analyzing modes of interpretation, providing specific questions to start analysis, and describing different forms analysis can take. Building on his renowned work exploring the relationship between narrative and illness, "Letting Stories Breathe" expands Frank's horizons further, offering a compelling perspective on how stories affect human lives.