An ontological discourse on storytelling

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to propose a new way to accurately study the nature of stories. There are three main questions I set out to answer: (1) How can stories be repeatable? (2) How can we characterise stories? (3) How can we account for their creativity? As a solution, I propose approaching it through a dynamic arrangement -instead of focusing solely on stories- which I’ve termed ‘storytelling’. According to this proposed arrangement, I first discern the different components of storytelling which are: story, narrative and telling. While investigating each of these elements separately, I accept a type/token relationship between them. However, instead of the traditional two-level theories, I refer to Nemesio Garcia-Carril Puy’s Hypothesis of Nested Types (2019). In order to have a comprehensive study, I investigate two different approaches to the nature of stories: as universal types and as abstract artefacts. All the while supporting that creativity is still possible within such type/token relationship.