Bodily functions in Narrative

In Brewer’s “A Loosening of Tongues: From Narrative Economy to Women Writing,” bodies act as the basis for language and narrative motivation, each narrative function both responding to and making claims about gendered bodies. To AnnieLeClerc, bodies as we know them are cultural constructs, with ideas, meanings, values, and concerns attached to them. If bodies are cultural constructs, and the ideas behind them are cultural constructs within the narrative, this supports Jerome Bruner’s assertion that narrative is a cultural construct.

Bodies, then, are simply elements of the narrative that serve specific functions. Each person has their own meanings and ideas attached to bodies, and thus the functions that bodies serve within the narrative fulfills different purposes, according to the reader’s horizon of expectations. As readers identify with the bodily functions of the narrative, they read through a cultural lens, thus identifying with them and perceiving them in different ways.

As James Phelan suggests that narrative involves relationships between the agency of the author, the text, and the reader, thus bodies within the narrative can serve multiple functions determined by authorial intent, discourse, and reader through a recursive process of meaning-making. Due to this rhetorical function of narrative, and the subjectivity of bodily functions within narrative, the use of these functions can often lead to reinforcement of stereotypes, such as in Lynne Huffer’s example of Sodom and Gomorrah, reiterating the age-old chastisement of certain types of bodies. Alternatively, through critical reading and narrative awareness, readers can challenge and complicate these functions, such as Gita Rajan’s rereading of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” readjusting one’s horizon of expectations in order to accommodate new bodily functions within narratives.