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Abstract
The
proposed study illustrates the complexity of the storytelling
phenomenon in two of Yann Martel’s novels in which story
gains both self-reflective and self-reflexive senses. Story here
gains functions varying from as a cognitive scheme of events to
discursive realit(y)/ies with the aim of constructing identity. The
paper examines the modes in which Martel’s narrator (prototype of
homo fabula)
tells or, from a rhetorical viewpoint, “performs” identity
through story. Particular stresses in the discussion are laid on the
conceptualization of the novels as meta
stories with supporting exemplifications, on their “tellability”
and canonicity breach with reference to the ten narrative traits
defined by Jerome Bruner.
Keywords:
narrative, story, meta
story, storytelling, fabula,
social self, meaning, rhetoricity, tellability, discursive reality/
construct, duality
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