We define our conscious experience by constructing narratives about ourselves and the people with whom we interact. Narrative pervades our lives--conscious experience is not merely linked to the number and variety of personal stories we construct with each other within a cultural frame, but is subsumed by them. The claim, however, that narrative constructions are essential to conscious experience is not useful or informative unless we can also begin to provide a distinct, organized, and empirically consistent explanation for narrative in relation to consciousness. Understanding the role of narrative in determining individual and collective consciousness has been elusive from within traditional academic frameworks. This volume argues that addressing so broad and complex a problem requires an examination from outside our insular disciplinary framework. Such an open examination would be informed by the inquiries and approaches of multiple disciplines. Recognition of the different approaches to examining personal stories will allow for the coordination of how narrative seems (its phenomenology), with what mental labor it does (its psychology), and how it is realized (its neurobiology). Only by overcoming the boundaries erected by multiple theoretical and discursive traditions can we begin to comprehend the nature and function of narrative in consciousness. Narrative and Consciousness brings together essays by exceptional scholars and scientists in the disciplines of literary theory, psychology, and neuroscience to examine how stories are constructed, how stories structure lived experience, and how stories are rooted in material reality (the human body). The specific topics addressed include narrative in the development of conscious awareness; autobiographical narrative, fiction and the construction of self; trauma and narrative disruptions; narrative, memory and identity; and the physiological and neural substrate of narrative. It is the editors' hope that the multidisciplinary nature of this collection will challenge the reader to move beyond disciplinary confines and toward a coherent interdisciplinary dialogue.

An anthology that traces the representation of consciousness and mind creation in English literature from 700 to the present.

Comparatively little critical attention has been devoted to narrative technique in modern fiction, and formal analysis of the work of Kafka, Beckett, and Robbe-Grillet in particular has for the most part been limited to short studies in journals, many of these in languages other than English. The criticism written in English has dealt primarily with theme with metaphysics and myth and ignored structure and style. Yet it is structure and style that offer the reader a way into the often bewildering and disturbing fictional worlds these three writers present. The problem confronting writers since the middle of the nineteenth century has been how to cope artistically with an increasingly alienating and mechanized world. As George Szanto sees it, Kafka, Beckett and Robbe-Grillet conclude, by the example of their fictions, that the writer's province is no longer this impossible environment. Instead, the writer must work within the only knowledge available to any one person: the knowledge attained through perceptions. The proper study for a storyteller is thus the search for the unique details, the describable perceptions a person chooses from the outside world and brings into their mind, which in the end define their nature. The shape of the story is determined by the narrating consciousness, that single character through whose awareness the details are filtered. Thus, in a very special sense, the tale and the telling are one. Szanto's meticulous and thoughtful study of the major fiction of Kafka, Beckett, and Robbe-Grillet searches out these details and examines the manner in which each author, through the minds of his characters, has selected and ordered them. His structural approach not only leads the reader directly into the works under scrutiny, but also provides an understanding of the workings of the art itself. In the appendices, the author surveys the different ways in which criticism has treated these three writers. His extensive bibliography provides a valuable research tool.

With the erosion of strong class theory, sociologists have recently started to look at aspects of social stratification other than class. One of the most interesting new areas of investigation is the sociology of generations. This book brings together the work of scholars who are making a major contribution to this new sociological interest. Through a combination of innovative theoretical and empirical studies, this book shows that an analysis of generations is essential to an understanding of major social, political and intellectual trends in the postwar period. Each author brings to the volume insights from their own area of specialism - with rich illustrative material spanning topics as diverse as African American identity and Spanish youth culture. Theoretical inspiration also comes from a range of traditions, including cultural and historical sociology; social interactionism; social and cognitive psychology and life course theory. However, a unifying thread emerges around questions about how generations should be conceptualized; the role of trauma generating generational consciousness; the relationship between auto-biography and generational identity and the nature of inter and intra-generational relationships. This volume, therefore, provides a lively contribution to debates about the nature of generations and a stimulating basis for further work in this area.

We define our conscious experience by constructing narratives about ourselves and the people with whom we interact. Narrative pervades our lives--conscious experience is not merely linked to the number and variety of personal stories we construct with each other within a cultural frame, but is subsumed by them. The claim, however, that narrative constructions are essential to conscious experience is not useful or informative unless we can also begin to provide a distinct, organized, and empirically consistent explanation for narrative in relation to consciousness. Understanding the role of narrative in determining individual and collective consciousness has been elusive from within traditional academic frameworks. This volume argues that addressing so broad and complex a problem requires an examination from outside our insular disciplinary framework. Such an open examination would be informed by the inquiries and approaches of multiple disciplines. Recognition of the different approaches to examining personal stories will allow for the coordination of how narrative seems (its phenomenology), with what mental labor it does (its psychology), and how it is realized (its neurobiology). Only by overcoming the boundaries erected by multiple theoretical and discursive traditions can we begin to comprehend the nature and function of narrative in consciousness. Narrative and Consciousness brings together essays by exceptional scholars and scientists in the disciplines of literary theory, psychology, and neuroscience to examine how stories are constructed, how stories structure lived experience, and how stories are rooted in material reality (the human body). The specific topics addressed include narrative in the development of conscious awareness; autobiographical narrative, fiction and the construction of self; trauma and narrative disruptions; narrative, memory and identity; and the physiological and neural substrate of narrative. It is the editors' hope that the multidisciplinary nature of this collection will challenge the reader to move beyond disciplinary confines and toward a coherent interdisciplinary dialogue.

A generally acknowledged characteristic of modern life, namely the temporalization of experience, inextricable from our intensified experience of contingency and difference, has until now remained largely outside psychology's purview. Wherever questions about the development, structure, and function of the concept of time have been posed - for example by Piaget and other founders of genetic structuralism - they have been concerned predominantly with concepts of "physical", chronometrical time, and related concepts (e.g., "velocity"). All the contributions to the present volume attempt to close this gap. A larger number are especially interested in the narration of stories. Overviews of the relevant literature, as well as empirical case studies, appear alongside theoretical and methodological reflections. Most contributions refer to specifically historical phenomena and meaning-constructions. Some touch on the subjects of biographical memory and biographical constructions of reality. Of all the various affinities between the contributions collected here, the most important is their consistent attention to issues of the constitution and representation of temporal experience.

Henry James Narrative Technique situates Henry James famous method within an emerging modernist tradition with roots in philosophical debates between rationalism and empiricism. This cogent study considers James works in the context of nineteenth-century thought on consciousness, perception, and cognition. Kristin Boudreau makes the compelling argument that these philosophical discussions influenced James depictions of consciousness and are integral to his narrative technique.