OUR FICTION ADDICTION: WHY WE NEED STORIES?

VERSION 2

“From fireside folk tales to Netflix dramas, narratives are essential to every society – and evolutionary theorists are now trying to figure out why, writes David Robson.”

By: David Robson

Published: BBC, 3 May 2018,  http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180503-our-fiction-addiction-why-humans-need-stories

Level of difficulty: **

This is a tough level one or an easy level two

BEFORE YOU READ

·         The storytelling animal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhd0XdedLpY

·         The Epic of Gilgamesh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWppk7-Mti4&vl=tr

QUESTIONS

1.       Read the first section of the text on the Epic of Gilgamesh and answer the questions:

a.       Why is it so surprising that the Epic of Gilgamesh is still being read today?

b.      What proof do we have of the past popularity of this work? Two answers

2.       Read the section titled “Escapism” and answer the questions:

a.       How do we reach the conclusion that stories must have been popular before writing was invented?

b.      What might have been the purpose of these early stories?

c.       The amount of time people spend reading fiction can’t be pure escapism because it would involve…

d.      What proof can you find for Joseph Carroll’s theory as to the purpose of reading fiction?

e.      Reading fiction is good for society as a whole because ……..

3.       Read the section titled “Paleolithic Politics” and answer the questions:

a.       The formation of bigger societies directly impacted the main themes in stories by leading them to….

b.      What is the advantage of making moral decision making the main theme of stories?

c.       The purpose of the Epic of Gilgamesh was to put across the lesson that…

d.      What additional purpose of storytelling is revealed through the study of the oldest stories in the world?

e.      What does “these themes” in the phrase “how these themes are also evident” refer to?

f.        What conclusion can be drawn from the study involving 200 novels?

g.       Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair are similar in the sense that both works show that …………………..is a serious mistake.

4.       Read the section titled Bonnets and Bonobos and answer the questions:

a.       Read the description of some of the characters in Austen’s novels. What conclusion can we draw from these descriptions about her?

b.      Why do the bad guys in stories look the way they do? To make clear that…

c.       The ultimate purpose that the above characters serve is …..

d.      What interesting observation did Ian McEwan make?

e.      McEwan states that thanks to these universal tendencies we are able to…

WRITING TASK

Use all the information you have gleaned to write an essay in which you discuss the reasons why storytelling is important for a community

OUR FICTION ADDICTION: WHY WE NEED STORIES? KEY AND TEACHERS’ NOTES

This purpose of this reading task is to introduce students to inferential questions albeit very simple ones. The logic, however, is all there. The fact that the text is a pleasure to read should also help matters along. The task is worth taking your time over for this reason. The way the questions have been put in four groups in accordance with the subtitles in the text will also make it possible to take breaks. This structure will be repeated in future tasks where there are no subtitles and students have to add them.

1.       a. Because it is 4000 years old/ b. Later iterations of the poem can be found over the next millennium; many of its basic elements can be found in so many of the popular stories that have come since

2.       a. The cave paintings in sites like Chauvet and Lascaux in France from 3000 years ago appear to depict dramatic scenes that were probably accompanied by oral storytelling. / b. Giving, providing (etc) important lessons / c.  An awful lot of time and energy / d. Brain scans have shown that reading or hearing stories activates various areas of the cortex that are involved in social and emotional processing . / e.  The more people read fiction, the easier they find it to empathize with other people.

3.       a. Communicate the right social norms / b. Moral decision making translates to real life behavior. / c. If even the heroic king has to respect others, so do you. / d. To offer a collective memory of times long past / e. Cooperation and friendship / f. Our interest in cooperation hasn’t dwindled with the increasing individualism of the industrial revolution / g. A quest for social dominance at the expense of others

4.       a. Writers like Austen are intuitive evolutionary psychologists with a stunningly accurate understanding of sexual dynamics that would pre-empt our recent theories. / b. They are members of an out-group. / c. Reinforcing our own sense of altruism and loyalty to the group/ d. The systematic nonintrusive observations of troops of bonobo show all the major themes of the 19^th century novel. / e. Enjoy literature from a time remote from our own , or from a culture that was profoundly different from our own.