Persons, Characters and the Meaning of ʻNarrativeʼ

  • Alfonso Muñoz-Corcuera
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Abstract

Narrative theories of personal identity have traditionally made an extensive use of the comparisons between literary characters and persons in order to illustrate their points. However, over the past decade there has been a significant amount of criticisms against these comparisons. In the present article I summarise all these criticisms and show that they depart from a formal notion of ʻnarrativeʼ that is completely alien to narrative theories. Thus, I rely on a cognitive notion of ʻnarrativeʼ that is closer to narrative theories to give an appropriate response to these criticisms.

Keywords

Personal Identity Literary Character Literary Work Narrative Form Ambiguity Problem 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes

Acknowledgement

This article was written while I was a Postdoctoral Fellow under the UNAM Postdoctoral Fellowships Program, Institute of Philological Research, UNAM. I would like to thank Miguel Ángel Sebastián for his comments on previous drafts of this chapter.

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Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • Alfonso Muñoz-Corcuera
    • 1
  1. 1.The National Autonomous University of MexicoMexico CityMexico

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