Seven Basic Plots? How can narrative inquiry and literary theory inform our understanding of the experiences of the children of prisoners?

• In Event: Culture, Narrative and the Sensory in Research

Abstract

Much research focused on groups with low social visibility is conducted about rather than with them, if it manages to engage directly with such groups at all. Even then much work relies on a researcher-produced semi-structured interview, imposing pre-existing assumptions and structures on the participants. The can be experienced as dominating, and even as fragmenting the participant’s life experience. Narrative inquiry, relying on human beings’ universal characteristic of storytelling, can empower participants to tell their stories, in the way they choose? But to what extent do these tales fit with archetypal models such as Booker’s Seven Basic Plots, so beloved by scriptwriters and authors? Drawing on research in the UK with the children of prisoners, this paper provides a fresh approach to conceptualising and analysing narrative inquiry as a research methodology.

Author

• David Shipley, University of Southampton