A brief plea for East-West literary bridge-building

Abstract

Stories are not important: they are vital. Stories are how humans make sense of the world. Their creators are recognised, as they should be. People with high levels of skill in storytelling are top players in the creative industries, and literary novels are often considered to be the pinnacle of intellectual achievement, celebrated by annual awards. Yet the main international prizes exclude most of the world’s authors, as they use US and UK publishers as gatekeepers. Furthermore, the literary novel itself is arguably a predominantly Western format of long-form fiction. Some 60% of the world’s population lives in Asia and people are accustomed to different stories in other formats. Training courses around the world offer MFAs which teach students Western narrative structures based on ideas from Aristotle, and focus on psychological elements associated with European thinkers such as Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Clearly, the differences between East and West in narrative structure and related factors would repay closer examination. Authors should be able to learn about stories with global rather than local appeal. This paper gives a brief overview of these issues and suggests avenues for further academic exploration.