April 02, 2018 Monday
Bedtime Story
The Story of 'Story'
We are continuing tonight with Part 2 of
Note B of Ada Lovelace which we will have to end abruptly and move to Note A
for the reason given below.
“In Note A the practicality of developing
symbolical with no less ease than numerical results has been touched on.”
At this point, hence, I am forced to leave
the Note B and go to Note A which is the first and introductory Note that
deserves to be narrated.
Ideally I should have gone in a serial
order with the Notes of Ada Lovelace but then it would not have been congruent
with my story line for after all, it is the bedtime stories that is of primary
importance in my writings, and the only thing that matters more than doing a
good story is its accuracy in terms of both facts and truth.
For the storytelling chimpanzee it is the
facts that are of paramount importance; all the literary embellishments and
belletristic poetry comes secondarily and tertiarily.
After all I am a narrator of true events
that are all in some manner, either remotely or intimately, connected with each
other and not a weaver of fantasies that so many others excel at.
Perhaps it’s high time now that I narrate
to you the story of ‘story’ itself.
The word story or narrative are intimate
and synonymous and the word narrative has its origins in the Latin verb narrare
which means “to tell” and this verb is itself derived from the adjective gnarus
which means “knowing” or “skilled”.
So by the very definition, stories not only
have something to do with narration but have their basis on or ought to rest
upon knowledge.
Stories in general can be classified into
three categories:
(1) Narrative Non-fiction – is a genre of
writing that I claim to specialize in wherein literal or even poetic style is
used to narrate factual and true events and which is generally discouraged in
academic setting but can be quite popular with the masses.
Things that are otherwise dry can be made
enticing with this kind of writing provided the writer has a flair for it.
(2) Fictionalization of historical events –
Nearly all great mythological and religious masterpieces fall into this
category of storytelling.
The great Greek classics and ancient Hindu
epics that almost often depict celestial wars and battles between powerful
supernatural gods and virtuous heroes against evil demons and wicked humans
fall into this genre of writings and are wrongfully considered literal truths
by the followers of respective religions.
(3) Fiction proper – is undoubtedly the
most popular genre among all the three categories that is confirmed by their
massive popularity amongst the proletariat resulting in several cases astounding
and almost bewildering run-away commercial successes.
Whatever may be the category of the story,
we apes (perhaps in contrast to our close cousin chimpanzees which is why they do
not tell stories and I do) are inveterate storytellers and the cultural stories
that we tell ourselves are so strongly embedded in our psyche that they form
the functioning basis and existential narratives around which largely revolves
our rich social and cultural lives.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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