Homo narrans and the Irrepressibility of Stories

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates that Maithil women weave theories of storytelling into their tales; moreover, some of these theories resonate with those developed in multidisciplinary literatures that consider the role of narrative in human life. Three specific contentions are examined. The first is Maithil women's implicit argument that stories themselves carry a form of agency that renders them irrepressible. This irrepressibility of tales takes on a particularly gendered significance in the context of Maithil gender order. The second narratological point is that stories move and morph. When stories travel across space, genre, context, and teller, as they inevitably do, they change in meaning and content. Finally, Maithil women's tales intimate a theory about the political nature of stories and storytelling: that insights and viewpoints on the social configurations of power are embedded in tales, and therefore their telling is a form of discursive political engagement.