Relating Narratives Storytelling and Selfhood

Relating Narratives is a major new work by the philosopher and feminist thinker Adriana Cavarero. First published in Italian to widespread acclaim, Relating Narratives is a fascinating and challenging new account of the relationship between selfhood and narration. Drawing a diverse array of thinkers from both the philosophical and the literary tradition, from Sophocles and Homer to Hannah Arendt, Karen Blixen, Walter Benjamin and Borges, Adriana Cadarero's theory of the `narratable self' shows how narrative models in philosophy and literature can open new ways of thinking about formation of human identities. By showing how each human being has a unique story that can be told about them, Adriana Cavarero inaugurates an important shift in thinking about subjectivity and identity which relies not upon categorical or discursive norms, but rather seeks to account for `who' each one of us uniquely is.

A Stork for an Introduction; Part I Heroes; Chapter 1 The Story of Oedipus; Chapter 2 The Paradox of Ulysses; Chapter 3 The Desire For One's Story; Part II Women; Chapter 4 Oedipus Errs Twice; Chapter 5 On the Outskirts of Milan; Chapter 6 In a New York Bookstore; Part III Lovers; Chapter 7 The Necessary Other; Chapter 8 Orpheus the Poet; Chapter 9 The Voice of Eurydice; Chapter 10 Eros and Narration; Part IV Narrators; Chapter 11 Scheherazade Trapped in the Text; Chapter 12 Karen Blixen, or the Classic Rule of Storytelling; Chapter 13 The World is Full of Stories Just Waiting to be Told;