From Cave Paintings to Picasso

Abbott defines "narrative" in his glossary as the representation of a story (an event or series of events). [1] This is a rather dry account, as glossary descriptions generally are, of a very rich and varied media. Barthes offers a more fleshed-out description:

Among the vehicles of narrative are articulated language, whether oral or written, pictures, still or moving, gestures, and an ordered mixture of all those substances; narrative is present in myth, legend, fables, tales, short stories, epics, history, tragedy, drame [suspense drama], comedy, pantomime, paintings (in Santa Ursula by Carpaccio, for instance), stained-glass windows, movies, local news, conversation. [2]

It is interesting that a narrative or "story" can be conveyed in these many types of medium. Throughout time man (and woman) has attempted to capture and retell either a factual event or fictional account by whatever means at hand. From cave paintings to Picasso, American Indian legends to Shakespeare, Charlie Chaplin to Spike Lee, everyone has a story to tell. Humans are born storytellers. Abbott writes:

Narrative capability shows up in infants some time in their third or fourth year, when they start putting verbs together with nouns. Its appearance coincides, roughly, with the first memories that are retained by adults of their infancy, a conjunction that has led some to propose that memory itself is dependent on the capacity for narrative. [3]

The novelist Paul Auster once wrote that "A child's need for stories is as fundamental as his need for food." [3] From the very beginning, our psyche is set up to record and justify our existence with stories. Children love to listen, hear, read, look at as well as create drawings, songs, imaginative play, etc. The need to be narrator and narratee [3] follows mankind throughout life and marks his/her passage through time:

...narrative is the principal way in which our species organizes lts understanding of time. [3]

Our lives become a timeline and the way humankind remembers and keeps track is through photos, stories, letters, videos, etc. If you think of one particular moment of your past, you probably remember it in reference to a photo, song or perhaps a specific account of what you were doing then. Our whole history can be strung together from various personal and public "stories." This is something tangible that can be passed down throughout generations to record who, what, when and why, inspiration and failure of our species.

In 1977, the Voyager spacecrafts were launched carrying phonograph records containing pictures, drawings, songs and sounds of our world. Is this humankind's attempt to tell our story to the rest of the universe?

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[1] Abbot, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2002. p236.

[2] Barthes, Roland and Duisit, Lionel. “On Narrative and Narratives”. New Literary History. Vol.6 No.2 (1975), p237.

[3] Abbot, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2002. p3, 14.