The End of the Story? Narrative Openness in Life and Death
Mots-clés :
Narrative, death, aging, meaning, wisdom, spiritualityRésumé
In this 2019 John McKendy Memorial Lecture,1 Dr. William Randall discussed how few topics intrigue us more than death. Yet few topics are more taboo—not unlike aging, with which, in many people’s minds, it can seem synonymous. But just as a narrative perspective on aging enables us to envision its more positive potentials in terms of meaning, wisdom, and spirituality, so a narrative perspective can shed a more redemptive light on death, presumably the final event in the story of our lives. Drawing on insights from psychology, gerontology, cosmology, theology, and literary theory, Dr. Randall used the concept of narrative openness to entertain alternative and ultimately enticing ways of storying the so-called end of life.
Références
Alexander, E. (2014). The map of heaven: How science, religion, and ordinary people are proving the afterlife. Simon & Schuster.
Alheit, P. (1995). Biographical learning: Theoretical outline, challenges, and contradictions of a new approach in adult education. In P. Alheit, A. Bron-Wojciechowska, E. Brugger, & P. Dominice (Eds.), The biographical approach in European adult education (pp. 57–74). Verband Wiener Voksbildung.
Banerjee, A. (2005). Speaking of death: Representations of death in palliative care.” InterCulture, 2(2):10–29.
Berman, H. (1994). Interpreting the aging self: Personal journals of later life. Springer.
Berry, T. (1987). The new story: Comments on the origin, identification and transmission of values. Cross Currents, 37(2-3). 187–199.
Bohlmeijer, E., & Westerhof, G. (2011). Reminiscence interventions: Bringing narrative gerontology into practice. In G. Kenyon, E. Bohlmeijer, & W. Randall (Eds.), Storying later life: Issues, investigations, and interventions in narrative gerontology. (pp. 273–289). Oxford University Press.
Bohlmeijer, E., Westerhof, G., Randall, W., Tromp, T., & Kenyon, G. (2011). Narrative foreclosure: Preliminary considerations for a new sensitizing concept. Journal of Aging Studies, 25(4), 364–370.
Brockmeier, J. (2001). From the end to the beginning: Retrospective teleology in autobiography. In J. Brockmeier & D. Carbaugh (Eds.), Narrative and identity: Studies in autobiography, self, and culture (pp. 247–280). John Benjamins.
Bruner, J. (2002). Making stories: Law, literature, and life. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Bruner, J., & Kalmar, D. (1998). Narrative and metanarrative in the construction of the self. In M. Ferrari & R. Sternberg (Eds.), Self-awareness: Its nature and development (pp. 308–331). Guilford.
Butler, R. (1963). The life review: An interpretation of reminiscence in the aged. Psychiatry, 26, 65–76.
Cuénot, C. (1965). Teilhard de Chardin: A biographical study (V. Colimore, Trans.). Helicon.
Cupitt, D. (1991). What is a story? SCM.
Davies, P. (1984). God and the new physics. Penguin.
Davies, P. (1993). The mind of God: Science and the search for ultimate meaning. Penguin.
Erikson, E. (1950). Childhood and society. W. W. Norton.
Freeman, M. (1991). Rewriting the self: Development as moral practice. In M. Tappan & M. Packer (Eds.), Narrative and storytelling: Implications for understanding moral development (pp. 83–101). Special Issue of New directions for child development, 54. Jossey-Bass.
Freeman, M. (1993). Rewriting the self: History, memory, narrative. Routledge.
Freeman, M. (1997). Death, narrative integrity, and the radical challenge of self-understanding: A reading of Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilych. Ageing and Society, 17, 373–398.
Freeman, M. (2010). Hindsight: The promise and peril of looking backward. Oxford University Press.
Gawande, A. (2014). Being mortal: Medicine and what matters in the end. Doubleday.
Gullette, M. (2004). Aged by culture. University of Chicago Press.
Haught, J. (2017) The new cosmic story: Inside our awakening universe. Yale University Press.
Hayflick, L. (1994). How and why we age. Ballantine.
Kane, D. (Writer). (2013–). Shetland [TV Series]. C. Aird, E. Collins, & K. Bartlett (Executive Producers). ITV Studios for BBC Scotland.
Kenyon, G. (2016). Pathways to stillness: Reflect, release, renew. Friesen Press.
Kermode, F. (1966). The sense of an ending: Studies in the theory of fiction. Oxford University Press.
Kotre, J. (1984). Outliving the self: Generativity and the interpretation of lives. Johns Hopkins University Press.
de Lange, F. (2015). Loving later life: An ethics of aging. Eerdmans.
Linde, C. (1993). Life stories: The quest for coherence. Oxford University Press.
Long, J., & Perry, P. (2016). God and the afterlife. HarperOne.
Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves. American Psychologist, 41(9). 954–969.
McAdams, D. (2001). The person: An integrated introduction to personality psychology (3rd ed.). Harcourt.
McTaggart, L. (2002). The field: The quest for the secret force of the universe. HarperCollins.
Miller, J. (1978). The problematic of ending in narrative. Nineteenth-Century Fiction 33(1), 3–7.
Moltmann, J. (1979). The future of creation: Collected essays. (Trans. M. Kohl). Fortress.
Moody, R. (1975). Life after life. Bantam.
Morson, G. (1994). Narrative and freedom: The shadows of time. Yale University Press.
Polkinghorne, D. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. State University of New York Press.
Randall. W. (2009). Transcending our stories: A narrative perspective on spirituality in later life. Critical Social Work, 10(1).
Randall, W., & McKim, E. (2008). Reading our lives: The poetics of growing old. Oxford University Press.
Richardson, B. (2009). Narrative beginnings: Theories and practice. University of Nebraska Press.
Said, E. (1975). Beginnings: Intention and method. Basic Books.
Said, E. (2006). On late style: Music and literature against the grain. Vintage.
Scott-Maxwell, F. (1968). The measure of my days. Penguin.
Taha, I. (1998/1999). Openness and closedness: Four categories of closurization in modern Arabic fiction. Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 2, 1–23.
Teilhard de Chardin, P. (1995). Hymn of the universe. Perennial. (Original work published 1965)
Teilhard de Chardin, P. (2001). The divine milieu. (G. Vonn, Trans.). Perennial. (Original work published 1957)
Tennyson, A. (1891). The higher pantheism. Works. Macmillan. Retrieved from https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/higher-pantheism
Tolle, E. (1999). The power of now. Namaste Publishing/ New World Library.
Tornstam, L. (1996). Gerotranscendence: A theory about maturing into old age. Journal of Aging and Identity 1(1), 37–49.
Zohar, D. (1990). The quantum self: A revolutionary view of human nature and consciousness rooted in the new physics. Bloomsbury
Téléchargements
Publié-e
Comment citer
Numéro
Rubrique
Licence
Copyright for articles published in Narrative Works is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to Narrative Works. By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings.
