This article analyses two major problems in the dichotomous framing of
the question of whether narratives in fiction and “real life” are the
same or different. The dichotomy prevents us from seeing, first, that
there are both crucial similarities and differences between them and, second, that there are important similarities between variants of the “similarity approach” and
the “difference approach”, both of which tend to rely on ahistorical,
universalizing and empiricist-positivistic assumptions concerning
factuality, raw experience and the non-referentiality of narrative
fiction. The article presents as an alternative to both approaches
narrative hermeneutics, which sees all narratives as culturally mediated
and historically changing interpretative practices but approaches
literary narratives as specific modes of making sense of the world – as
ones that have truth-value on a different level than non-literary
narratives. Narrative hermeneutics shares with (at least some forms of)
unnatural narratology and the Örebro School a passion for the uniqueness
of literary narratives, but it places the emphasis on the ability of
literature to disclose the world to us in existentially charged ways
that would not be otherwise culturally available – in ways that open up
new possibilities of thought, action and affect.