Life stories
Table of contents
From a lay perspective, life stories are typically considered to be windows that offer a unique and highly personalized view into the past, as it was in reality. As a form of time machine, they allow the listeners to travel back with the narrator to his/her past life, which is subsequently re-played in front of them, thus giving a vivid view on the narrator’s past experiences, and potentially also on the historical facts of the time in which he/she lived. Such tellings may be so entertaining that the listeners may spur the narrator on at a next occasion to tell a particular part of their life story again, as such seemingly transporting all the interlocutors to a particular section of the past life of a narrator over and over again. These past events that are narrated seem to be archived in the memory of the narrator, who simply needs to take his/her stories from the correct shelf and brush off the dust of forgetfulness. Thus within this ‘archive’-image, telling stories can occur at any time, at any place and for any audience, since, as long as the narrator stays the same – and does not suffer from memory loss – these particular stories are sitting in their mind waiting to be performed.
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