Work · Phenomenology & Hermeneutics
Time and Narrative
Augustine's aporias of time and Aristotle's emplotment – time becomes human by being narrated.
Introduction
Ricoeur’s three-volume study, published in French between 1983 and 1985. It begins by confronting Augustine’s puzzles about time in the Confessions with Aristotle’s account of plot in the Poetics: “emplotment” draws scattered events together into a meaningful whole. Ricoeur describes a threefold mimesis – the prefiguration of action in practical life, its configuration in a text and its refiguration by the reader. The first volume also deals with historical writing, the second with fiction, including Mrs Dalloway, The Magic Mountain and Proust; the third sets narrative against the theories of time of Husserl and Heidegger and arrives at the concept of “narrative identity”, developed further in Oneself as Another (1990).
Connections
Builds on
- Poeticsc. 335 BCE · Aristotle
- Confessionsc. 400 · Augustine
- Being and Time1927 · Martin Heidegger
Taken up in
- Oneself as Another1990 · Paul Ricœur
Answered in
- The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation1987 · Hayden White
More works by Paul Ricœur
Sources: Wikidata
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