Re: [xmca] Re: fiction as simulation

["O'Connor, Kevin" <kevin.oconnor@rochester.edu>]

I think Jerry Bruner has discussed this phenomenon of repetition as well,
possibly in Acts of Meaning.  I'm away from my office and don't have the
book handy, but I seem to recall that he does discuss the kinds of multiple
concerns involved in repeated tellings that Ageliki mentions.
Kevin

On 12/21/09 12:38 PM, "Ageliki Nicolopoulou" <agn3@Lehigh.EDU> wrote:

> The one person that I know who has written about repetitions of
> listening, but also telling, the "same" story is Peggy Miller and her
> students "Versions of storytelling/versions of experience: Genre for
> tools for creating alternative realities" in an edited volume by
> Rosengren, Johnson, & Harris (2000) "Imagining the impossible."  Their
> emphasis in this piece is the type of increasing (and deepening)
> understanding that this child who for sometime was repeating the story
> of Peter Rabbit was gaining and especially his increasing identification
> with Peter Rabbit.
> 
> While I don't dispute the phenomenon that Peggy Miller et al. capture
> here, I also think that storytelling (or story listening) repetitions
> may have multiple functions/meanings.  For example, in children's
> spontaneous stories that I have gathered in preschool classrooms using
> Paley's storytelling/story-acting activity, children's repetitions of
> the same storyline (something that some children love to do!) at times
> seems to have to do with what I call, narrative concerns (getting the
> story right: that is, a coherent or logical story as the child perceives
> it), but other repetitions may indicate more clearly socio-relational
> concerns (getting the same effect from other children and maybe adults)
> and so on.
> 
>  I also think that repetitions of the sort Mike is talking
> about--children asking for the same story to be read over and over again
> as well as teens or adults reading the same book over and over
> again--may serve different functions. I believe the young children love
> such repetitions because it mainly allows them to control the world
> around them. They can predict what comes next and for a limited amount
> of time, they have full control of their (often chaotic and
> unpredictable) world. That's why they are very upset if one changes even
> one word in these repetitions.  However, adolescents (and maybe adults)
> may like such repetitions because of the experiences and feelings that
> the fictional world creates (and they can bask in it) and also through
> repetitions they learn to discover new things...Maybe adolescents love
> such repetitions because it helps them see the identity they want/like
> to create.  At least these are my conjectures about these phenomena.
> 
> In short, I think these are very interesting phenomena that have
> occupied my attention for awhile now, but they need to be captured well
> and in a natural sort of way... Any thoughts of how to capture these
> phenomena would be appreciated.
> 
> Ageliki

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