Narrative – Latin narrat– ‘related, told,’ from the verb narrare (from gnarus ‘knowing’ ).
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A synopsis of a plot resembles a story, but when a plot becomes immersive and one’s normal way of seeing is suspended, the story is known in a different way that is irreducible to plot.
This mode of knowledge is the truth of literature. It is obviously not tacit knowledge (like phronesis) but it is not factually explicit, and it is indirect and elusive. It is the superstructure of significance laid over the facts and images that connects them into a whole and lends them interest and value.
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Two friends witness an event. One looks at the other, the other looks back, and that says it all. The shortest nonverbal shorthand for a subtly nuanced, finely detailed response connected out into dozens of shared associations. It would take five-hundred pages to convey what was meant to the uninitiated, but part of the meaning is the brevity.
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A literary work can be seen as an exhibit of an ethical possibility.
There is truth and falsehood here, but not one that can be attacked or defended with arguments. It’s either welcomed or it’s patent nonsense.
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A person who cannot suspend his usual ethos and inhabit a new one will only enjoy literary works that affirm what he already knows.
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The best philosophy is more literary than factual, but philosophy is rarely read as literature.
That’s probably for the better. In fiction, the break between literature and life is clear. In philosophy, the factual dimension of reality is left open so the facts of one’s own life can flow in. If a reader suspends his usual way of seeing and allows a new ethical possibility to reveal itself, the new ethical possibility might choose not to relinquish its place. The reader closes the book, but the philosophy continues to philosophize and the world cooperates as an ethical actuality.
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When two people fight and become estranged, the estrangement manifests narratively. Each tells a different story about the same event. Neither recognizes himself in the other’s antagonist. Reconciliation is mending the torn story, weaving antagonistic subplots back together into into a coauthored resolution: a story of two protagonists.
Sometimes an estrangement is so complete that the best that can be done is to reach agreement on the facts of what transpired. A synopsis is agreed upon, the behaviors are psychologically accounted for, but the literature is lost. The relationship can continue, but the friendship is now backstory. Perhaps something better can be built on the new foundation.