(in)Fidelity: The Narrative Rationality of Tiger Woods

In this article, the narrative paradigm is applied to the documented life of Tiger Woods, viewing his story as sports folklore and public moral argument, asking, what patterns exist in his narrative? What values? And how can the narrative of Tiger Woods be described in terms of narrative rationality? Looked at as a mythic hero, Tiger feathers the line between fantasy and reality and has gone through the requisite rituals of violation and reconstruction. Accordingly, the duplicity in his character revealed through scandal, and the fallibility of his superhuman image exposed through injury give him something to overcome. As long as he redeems himself each time he falls the conditions of the mythic hero are kept intact. However, implicit in his story is the notion that ends can justify means as he has overcome scandal, criticism of his training methods, and criticism of his character throughout his career.

Michael J. Hyde, The Interruption That We Are: The Health of the Lived Body, Narrative, and Public Moral Argument

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‘Who Tells Your Story?’: Narrative Theory, Public Memory, and the Hamilton Phenomenon

The popularity of Lin-Manuel Miranda's hit musical Hamilton has been unprecedented. Hamilton tells the story of the first United States Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, a founding father who, until recently, was often forgotten in American public memory. Miranda's unique musical, which fuses an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century story with contemporary music and text, features actors of various races and genders in order to tell the story of ‘America then’ by and for ‘America now’. Through a close textual analysis of the musical's script, cast recording, and sheet music, Valerie Lynn Schrader uses narrative theory to explore how Hamilton creates public memory of one of the lesserknown US founding fathers. She argues that, through the narrative paradigm, Hamilton creates what narrative theorist Walter Fisher refers to as ‘public moral argument’,1 through which audience members can discern life lessons, or ‘equipment for living’,2 for their own lives. Finally, the article suggests that the rhetorical theory of Burkean identification may play a role in how public memory of Hamilton's story is formed and how audience members learn life lessons from the musical. Valerie Lynn Schrader is Associate Professor of Communications Arts and Sciences at the Schuylkill Campus of the Pennsylvania State University. Her research focuses on rhetorical messages in theatre works, especially musical theatre productions. She is herself a classically trained lyric soprano/soubrette.