Narratives teach us how to conceive of ourselves, in two interrelated ways. The way in which we experience narrative becomes an important organizing principle for our understanding of how lives are lived; and the narratives that surround us teach us about our world and how to narrate our place within it. Narratives therefore enable us to make sense of our lives. But narrative is a paradoxical form suspended between the expected and the unexpected, which drives it forward but also constantly threatens to undermine it. This article explores the paradoxical nature of narrative and the tensions that this gives rise to in considering the narrative construction of lives.
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