TOC, Fall 2010 Newsletter: Narratives
Narrative Fun
10 Famous Narratives
- circa 70AD The Gospel of Luke
- late 14th Century The Cantebury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer
- 1834 A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, by David Crockett
- 1839 The Voyage of the Beagle (1839) by Charles Darwin
- 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave by Frederick Douglass
- 1855 Hiawatha (narrative poem), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- 1872 Roughing It (1872), Mark Twain. A narrative of journey across the plains to Carson City, and his life and adventures in Nevada, California, and the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii).
- 1903 The Log of a Cowboy: a Narrative of Old Trail Days among the Indians of Wyoming, Montana, etc. 1903. by Andy Adams
- 1909-14 Drake’s Great Armada, Narrative mainly Captain Walter Bigges:
A Summary and True Discourse of SIR FRANCIS DRAKE’S West Indian Voyage, begun in the year 1585. Wherein were taken the cities of SANTIAGO, SANTO DOMINGO, CARTHAGENA, and the town of ST. AUGUSTINE, in FLORIDA. Published by MASTER THOMAS CATES. - 1962 Silent Spring, Rachel Carson.
Quotes about Narratives
The most important distinction between dialogue on the one hand and purely descriptive and narrative pieces on the other hand is a purely grammatical one.—H. Sweet.
Interesting Reading
- Science as Narrative: The Story of the Discovery of Penicillin
- Something from Nothing: Marie Curie and Radium, by Carla McClafferty
Arkansas author, Carla McClafferty won the International Reading Association Award for Intermediate Readers for this biography-plus of Marie Curie. It’s a powerful narrative about the famous scientists and her discovery of radium.
Interesting Viewing
Narratives of Science, MIT Video. With Robert Kanigel, Thomas Levenson, and Alan Lightman
May 7, 2005. 1:27:05 length. Topic is about science writing.