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“left-to-right” and “up-to-down” conventions of cartoon strips and cathedral
windows. What underlies all conventionalized forms for representing narrative
is a “mental model” that has its unique pattern of events over time that gives it
its defining property. And to that we shall come presently.
2. Particularity.
Narratives take as their ostensive reference particular happen-
ings. But this is, as it were, their vehicle rather than their destination. For sto-
ries plainly fall into more general types; they are about boy-woos-girl, bully-
gets-his-comeuppance, etc. In this sense the particulars of narratives are tokens
of broader types. Where the boy-woos-girl script calls for the giving of a gift,
for example, the gift can equally well be flowers, perfume, or even an endless
golden thread. Any of these may serve as an appropriate token or emblem of a
gift. Particularity achieves its emblematic status by its embeddedness in a story
that is in some sense generic. And, indeed, it is by virtue of this embeddedness
in genre, to look ahead, that narrative particulars can be “filled in” when they
are missing from an account. The “suggestiveness” of a story lies, then, in the
emblematic nature of its particulars, its relevance to a more inclusive narra-
tive type. But for all that, a narrative cannot be realized save through particular
embodiment.
3. Intentional state entailment.
Narratives are about people acting in a set-
ting, and the happenings that befall them must be relevant to their intentional
states while so engaged - to their beliefs, desires, theories, values, etc. When an-
imals or non-agentive objects are cast as narrative protagonists, they must be
endowed with intentional states for the purpose, like the Little Red Engine in
the children's story. Physical events play a role in stories chiefly by affecting the
intentional states of their protagonists. As Baudelaire put it, “The first business
of an artist is to substitute man for nature.”
But intentional states in narrative never fully determine the course of
events, since a character with a particular intentional state might end up
doing
practically anything. For some measure of agency is always present in narra-
tive, and agency presupposes choice - some element of “freedom.” If people
can predict anything from a character's intentional states, it is only how he
will feel or how he will have perceived the situation. The loose link between
intentional states and subsequent action is the reason why narrative accounts
cannot provide causal explanations. What they supply instead is the basis for
interpreting
why a character acted as he or she did. Interpretation is concerned
with “reasons” for things happening, rather than strictly with their “causes,” a
matter to which we turn next.
