Chosen Prompt:
The uses of storytelling. People tell each other stories, over and over, in the poems, plays, and stories we have read. And they seem to do this for various reasons: self-expression and confession (storytelling as a means of communicating self to world); building social bonds (storytelling as a kind of gift, or debt); to delay a negative outcome (storytelling as strategy). Looking at two or more texts—or two or more storytelling characters—write an argumentative, analytical essay on the uses of storytelling. NOTE: You may use the Odyssey, here, but only in addition to two other texts.
Storytelling in the Odyssey:
Used to bring pleasure to the listeners – Bards are usually called upon to recite stories at dinner/parties. For instance in Ithaca when Telemachus and the suitors are at Odysseus’ house and in Phaeacia when the bard is called upon to tell stories when all the men are gathered with Odysseus.
Used to reflect on the past, inform others – When Menelaus and Helen are telling Telemachus about the Trojan war, when Agamemnon tells Odysseus the story of his murder in the underworld. This use of stories in the odyssey is crucial to the structure of the story as a whole as it utilizes stories to clue the readers in. This is especially helpful since the Odyssey comes after the Iliad and one who has not read the Iliad would be lost were it not for the abundant storytelling found within the text.
Storytelling in The Thousand and One Nights:
Used to threaten/give life lessons: When the father of Shahrazad is trying to convince her not to marry the king he tells her the story about the donkey and the ox and the story about the merchant and his wife. The first story is to serve as a lesson while the second can be considered a threat. Additionally, when the Fisherman is telling the Demon about the story of the King and the wise man who cured him. He tells the story to warn him of what is going to happen to him if he does not let the fisherman live.
Used to delay a negative outcome: Once Shahrazad marries the king she starts telling him stories every night without ever finishing them in order to stay alive.
Storytelling in The Inferno:
Used to confess one’s sins: Towards the end of the inferno, there are sinners who tell Dante what sin they committed in order to confess, to get the weight off their shoulders in a way.
Used as a way to be remembered in the future: Sinners tell Dante their stories so that he can include them in his poem and as a result they will be read about for many years. In fact, when Dante is in the last few circles of Hell, he fails to feel any pity towards these spirits and the only thing he can offer them is a place in his poem.
I think this is a good approach, I actually did something very similar in my first essay for this class. What I think I’d like to see, just to get a better idea of your opinion on these different employments, is your potential thesis and the gist of any points you’d make in your conclusion to take your ideas one step further. We all got to see how stories have been used differently, but what do you find makes that particularly interesting?
Basically, something to combat the argument that “well, of course different texts from different cultures and time periods can be found to use one thing in different ways”.
– Maybe, for example, your argument is really toward the need (not just that it fits, but actually would not pan out the same otherwise or not accomplish certain goals) for storytelling to be used in that way for each because of the other themes it mingles with. (This seems like where you’re going so far, categorizing it as a tool.)
Hi Vitoria,
You do an excellent job, here, of outlining the great variety of uses of storytelling at work in the texts we’ve read. Your next task, I think, is to come up with a way of tying this enormous variety together–that is, of crafting a claim that will form an argumentative thread running through the essay as a whole.
It occurs to me that (with a handful of exceptions; I’ll get to that, below), storytelling, as you sketch it here, is a kind of transaction. In some cases, the storyteller receives something in exchange for the tale (safety, for instance). In other cases, the listener receives something in exchange for offering time and attention. Storytelling is a kind of currency, facilitating social exchange, and binding listeners and tale-tellers together in different ways.
The exception seems to me to be Dante. Here, tale-tellers (or some of them) get nothing except perhaps the relief of confessing. Some seem to want the reward of ending up in Dante’s poem, others are indifferent or even hostile to this. Dante himself seems to have myriad motives for wanting to hear stories: curiosity, sympathy, and literary ambition are among them. Here, storytelling is less of a transaction–or one in which costs, profits, and motives are less legible–perhaps because the social bond forged between the tale-tellers (the damned) and the listener (Dante) is complicated, or perhaps even rendered impossible, by their ontological, existential difference: Dante is alive and exists in time; they are dead, and exist in eternity.
Having a complicated instance of your claim–having an example that troubles or problematizes the main thrust of the essay–is, I should emphasize, a GOOD THING. So here, I’m flagging both the direction in which I see the essay going, and an area that will need particular thought and attention (how the Inferno’s stories work differently, and why that might be).
On a smaller level–it strikes me that some stories, in the Odyssey, are both pleasurable AND strategic. Odysseus’ own story–which takes up several books in the middle of the epic–produces goodwill between himself and the Phaecians, ultimately inspiring them to help him home. But it’s also a pleasurable story; he is praised as a tale teller.
I’m excited to see this develop!
Best,
Prof Kolb
PS PS Have a look at my comment on Delsy’s post, which is similar in some ways, though it has a different structure within each section. I’m pretty sure you’ll end up writing very different papers; at this stage, some of the same advice applies to both of you.