Sociolinguistic Implications of Narratology: Focalization and ‘Double Deixis’ in Conversational Storytelling

Over the last few decades, literary narratology has branched out into a wide array of ‘post-classical’ narratologies that have borrowed concepts from cognitive psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, linguistics, and other disciplines. The question arises to what extent ‘classical’ narratological concepts can also be successfully exported to other disciplines which have an interest in narrative. In this article, I apply the concept of ‘focalization’ as well as David Herman’s insights into doubly-deictic ‘you’ in second-person narratives to an interview narrative and further materials from my empirical sociolinguistic study on general practitioners’ narrative discourse on intimate partner abuse. I consider how the narrative positioning of the GP as storyteller and ‘protagonist’ of his story corresponds with his social and professional positioning with regard to his patients in the context of intimate partner violence cases and vis-à-vis the interviewer during the research interview. Focalization and double deixis are shown to become part of a narrative strategy whereby the narrator distances himself from his own personal self in the narrative and at the same time tries to align the interviewer with his viewpoint.

On the Epistemology of Narrative Theory: Narratology and Other Theories of Fictional Narrative

In this article, I propose to analyze narrative theory from an epistemological standpoint. To do so, I will draw upon both Genettian narratology and what I would call, following Shigeyuki Kuroda, “non-communicational” theories of fictional narrative. In spite of their very unequal popularity, I consider these theories as objective, or, in other words, as debatable and ripe for rational analyses; one can choose between them. The article is made up of three parts. The first part concerns the object of narrative theory, or the narrative as a constructed object, both in narratology (where narrative is likened to a narrative discourse) and in non-communicational narrative theories (where fictional narrative and discourse are mutually exclusive categories). The second part takes up the question of how the claims of these theories do or do not lend themselves to falsification. In particular, Gérard Genette’s claim that “every narrative is, explicitly or not, ‘in the first person’”, will be considered, through the lens of Ann Banfield’s theory of free indirect style. In the third part the reductionism of narrative theory will be dealt with. This leads to a reflection on the role of narrative theory in the analysis of fictional narratives.

Narrative, Memory and the Crisis of Mimesis: the Case of Adam Elsheimer and Giordano Bruno

The triangular space between memory, narrative and pictorial representation is the terrain on which this article is developed. Taking the art of memory developed by Giordano Bruno (1548 – 1600) and the art of painting subtly revolutionised by Adam Elsheimer (1578 – 1610) as test-cases, it is shown how both subvert the norms of mimesis and narration prevalent throughout the Renaissance, how disrupted memory creates “incoherent” narratives, and how perspective and the notion of “place” are questioned in a corollary way. Two paintings by Elsheimer are analysed and shown to include, in spite of their supposed “realism”, numerous incoherencies, aporias and strange elements – often overlooked. Thus, they do not conform to two of the basic rules governing both the classical art of memory and the humanist art of painting: well-defined places and the exhaustive translatability of words into images (and vice-versa). In the work of Bruno, both his philosophical claims and the literary devices he uses are analysed as hints for a similar (and contemporaneous) undermining of conventions about the transparency and immediacy of representation.

Keskeytyksiä elämässä : Naisten toimijuudet aborttikertomuksissa

The present study focuses on the question of agency in the narratives of women who have experienced an abortion. The study scrutinizes agency by analyzing narratives and their context, that is, how narratives are entwined with cultural discourses and societal practices. The study thus addresses also the wider framework within which experiences and actions can be constructed in abortion narratives in the contemporary Finnish society. The women who wrote their stories or were interviewed were of different ages and had different social and religious backgrounds. Many variations of agency were found when abortion experiences were analyzed through the women s embodied and historically specific accounts. Independent and rational choices are entwined with emotions and choices made together with other people. Intimate relationships with family and friends have an important role in the choices regarding abortion. These relationships do not, however, simply belong in the private sphere but reflect the wider socio-cultural meanings of social bonds and family ties. Women s agency with regard to abortion is also constructed in encounters with the medical profession and within the wider framework of abortion legislation. The Finnish legislation grants women an abortion within certain parameters but not solely on the basis of a woman s wish to have an abortion. The data consists primarily of written narratives and interviews. All together 39 women shared their experiences with the researcher. The analysis focuses on decision-making regarding abortion, depictions of freedom and responsibility, emotions around abortion and expressions of values and religious views. The links between the women's experiences and the wider socio-cultural norms and institutions are analyzed through materials consisting of public debate on abortion in the media, ethical statements as well as literature and legislation on abortion. The analysis sheds light on the tensions apparent in the women's narratives between the legal status of abortion and more traditional views on abortion. The study demonstrates that the freedom linked to abortion is not solely to do with the right to have an abortion but also how abortion can be experienced, understood and where one can talk about the experience afterwards. The analysis reveals that Christian values shape women's experiences but that there are also new religious ways to deal with the ethical considerations brought about by abortion. Annually over 10 000 Finnish women experience an abortion, which is a situation involving ethical considerations. The study provides a nuanced account of the ways in which one can think and act when going through an abortion.

Monietnisten ihmisten etninen identiteetti suomalaisessa viitekehyksessä : kosmopoliittisuutta, monikulttuurisuutta ja itsensä etsimistä

The purpose of this thesis was to understand the experiences of the multiethnic people in Finland. This study explored the different aspects of the ethnic identity development process. Thesis was done in two phases. First phase studied the question of how is the ethnic identity developed in Finnish context and what aspects had affected their ethnic identity process. The second phase explored questions as what kind of ethnic identity form the multiethnic people have in Finland and do they have developed cosmopolitan global identities. The aim of this qualitative study was not to empirically measure or define the multiethnic identity, but to open new perspectives of the life and experiences through narrative research. Intention of this thesis was to give voice to small stories of the minority people that are so often shadowed by the big stories of the male of the majority. The first phase of this study included narratives from four multiethnic women. The narratives answered to questions who am I and where do I come from. The second phase data collection was made with narrative forms to 12 self-identified multiethnic persons. The multiethnic people were from three backgrounds: ones with parents from different ethnic backgrounds, Finnish who had lived long time abroad and people from non-Finnish backgraound who had lived in Finland for a long time. The analyzing was made by analyzing the narratives with content analysis that based on the theory of the multiethnic people and by narrative analyzing where short narratives were created of each person. In conclusion the multiethnic identity was found to be a continuous process that lasted through lifetime. Different aspects affected the identification process, including family dynamics, social mirroring and belonging. The variety of different ethnic options in multiethnic person identity process, lacking family support for the both ethnic identities and the feeling of otherness experienced by the multiethnic people in Finland cause additional challenges to the ethnic identity process and results in some cases cultural homelessness. On the other hand the variety of cultural contexts brings flexibility to negotiate between different cultures and languages resulting to positive hybrid identity for some of the multiethnic people. Hybrid identity was sub grouped to cosmopolitan identity and multicultural identity.

Common past, divided memories: historical memory of the Polish minority members in Lithuania

The Master’s thesis examines historical memory of the Polish minority members in Lithuania with regard to how their interpretation of the common Polish-Lithuanian history reiterates or differs from the official Polish and Lithuanian narratives conveyed by the school textbooks. History teaching in high schools carries a crucial state-supported role of “identity building policies” – it maintains a national narrative of memory, which might be exclusive to minorities and their peculiar understanding of history. Lithuanians Poles, in this regard, represent a national minority, which is exposed to two conflicting national narratives of the common past – Polish and Lithuanian. As members of the Polish nation, their understanding of the common Polish-Lithuanian history is conditioned by the Polish historical narrative, acquired as part of the collective memory of the family and/or different minority organizations. On the other hand, they encounter Lithuanian historical narrative of the Polish-Lithuanian past throughout the secondary school history education, where the curriculum, even if taught in Polish, largely represents the Lithuanian point of view. The concept of collective memory is utilized to refer to collective representations of national memory (i.e. publicly articulated narratives and images of collective past in history textbooks) as well as to socially framed individual memories (i.e. historical memory of minority members, where individual remembering is framed by the social context of their identity). The thesis compares the official national historical narratives in Lithuania and Poland, as conveyed by the Polish and Lithuanian history textbooks. The consequent analysis of qualitative interviews with the Polish minority members in Lithuania offers insights into historical memory of Lithuanian Poles and its relation to the official Polish and Lithuanian national narratives of the common past. Qualitative content analysis is applied in both parts of the analysis. The narratives which emerge from the interview data could be broadly grouped into two segments. First, a more pronounced view on the past combines the following elements: i) emphasis on the value of multicultural and diverse past of Lithuania, ii) contestation of “Lithuanocentricity” of the Lithuanian narrative and iii) rejection of the term “occupation”, based on the cultural presuppositions – the dominant position of Polish culture and language in the Vilnius region, symbolic belonging and “Lithuanianness” of the local Poles. While the opposition to the term of “occupation” is in accord with the official Polish narrative conveyed by the textbooks, the former two elements do not neatly adhere to either Polish or Lithuanian textbook narratives. They should rather be considered as an expression of claims for inclusion of plural pasts into Lithuanian collective memory and hence as claims for symbolic enfranchisement into the Lithuanian “imagined community”. The second strand of views, on the other hand, does not exclude assertions about the historically dominant position of Polish culture in Lithuania, but at the same time places more emphasis on the political and historical continuity of the Lithuanian state and highlights a long-standing symbolic connectedness of Vilnius and Lithuania, thus, striking a middle way between the Polish and Lithuanian interpretations of the past.

Variation i kvinnors namnfraser i officiella dokument i Helsingfors 1780-1930 : Socioonomastiska synvinklar på makt och identitet

This dissertation is an onomastic study of variation in women s name phrases in official documents in Finland during the period 1780−1930. The aim is to discuss from a socio-onomastic perspective both the changeover from patronymics to inherited family names and the use of surnames after marriage (i.e. whether women adopted their husbands family names or retained their maiden names), before new laws in this area entered into force in Finland in the early 20th century. In 1920, a law on family names that required fixed names put an end to the use of the patronymic as a person s only surname. After 1929, it was no longer possible for a married woman to retain her maiden name. Methodologically, to explain this development from a socio-onomastic perspective, I have based my study on a syntactic-semantic analysis of the actual name phrases. To be able to demonstrate the extensive material, I have elaborated a scheme to divide the 115 different types of name phrases into 13 main categories. The analysis of the material for Helsinki is based on frequency calculations of the different types of name phrases every thirtieth year, as well as on describing variation in the structure and semantic content of the name phrases, e.g. social variation in the use of titles and epithets. In addition to this, by applying a biographic-genealogical method, I have conducted two case studies of the usage of women s name phrases in the two chosen families. The study is based on parish registers from the period 1780−1929, estate inventory documents from the period 1780−1928, registration forms for liberty of trade from the period 1880−1908, family announcements on newspapers from the period 1829−1888, gravestones from the period 1796−1929 and diaries from the periods 1799−1801 and 1818−1820 providing a corpus of 5 950 name phrases. The syntactic-semantic analysis has revealed the overall picture of various ways of denoting women in official documents. In Helsinki, towards the end of the 19th century, the use of inherited family names seems to be almost fully developed in official contexts. At the late 19th century, a patronymic still appears as the only surname of some working-class women whereas in the early 20th century patronymics were only entered in the parish register as a kind of middle name. In the beginning of the 19th century, most married women were still registered under their maiden names, with a few exceptions among the bourgeoisie and upper class. The comparative analysis of name phrases in diaries, however, indicates that the use of the husband s family name by married women was a much earlier phenomenon in private contexts than in official documents. Keywords: socio-onomastics, syntactic-semantic analysis, name phrase, patronymic, maiden name, husband s family name

Struggles Over Legitimacy in Global Organizational Restructuring: A Rhetorical Perspective on Legitimation Strategies and Dynamics in a Shutdown Case

Critical organization scholars have focused increasing attention on industrial and organizational restructurings such as shutdown decisions. However, little is known about the rhetorical strategies used to legitimate or resist plant closures in organizational negotiations. In this article, we draw from New Rhetoric to analyze rhetorical struggles, strategies and dynamics in unfolding organizational negotiations. We focus on the shutdown of the bus body unit of the Sweden-based Volvo Bus Corporation in Finland. We distinguish five types of rhetorical legitimation strategies and dynamics. These include the three classical dynamics of logos (rational arguments), pathos (emotional moral arguments), and ethos (authority-based arguments), but also autopoiesis (autopoietic narratives), and cosmos (cosmological constructions). Our analysis contributes to previous studies on organizational restructuring by providing a more nuanced understanding of how contemporary industrial closures are legitimated and resisted in organizational negotiations. This study also increases theoretical understanding of the role of rhetoric in legitimation more generally.

On the Narrative Construction of Multinational Corporations: An Antenarrative Analysis of Legitimation and Resistance in a Cross-Border Merger

Although extant research has highlighted the role of discourse in the cultural construction of organizations, there is a need to elucidate the use of narratives as central discursive resources in unfolding organizational change. Hence, the objective of this article is to develop a new kind of antenarrative approach for the cultural analysis of organizational change. We use merging multinational corporations (MNCs) as a case in point. Our empirical analysis focuses on a revelatory case: the financial services group Nordea, which was built by combining Swedish, Finnish, Danish, and Norwegian corporations. We distinguish three types of antenarrative that provided alternatives for making sense of the merger: globalist, nationalist, and regionalist (Nordic) antenarratives. We focus on how these antenarratives were mobilized in intentional organizational storytelling to legitimate or resist change: globalist storytelling as a means to legitimate the merger and to create MNC identity, nationalist storytelling to relegitimate national identities and interests, Nordic storytelling to create regional identity, and the critical use of the globalist storytelling to challenge the Nordic identity. We conclude that organizational storytelling is characterized by polyphonic, stylistic, chronotopic, and architectonic dialogisms and by a dynamic between centering and decentering forces. This paper contributes to discourse-cultural studies of organizations by explaining how narrative constructions of identities and interests are used to legitimate or resist change. Furthermore, this analysis elucidates the dialogical dynamics of organizational storytelling and thereby opens up new avenues for the cultural analysis of organizations.

REHTORIT PORTINVARTIJOINA : sekä miten rehtoreiden kertomuksista muodostuu pääkaupunkiseudun Tehostetun ja erityisen tuen kehittämisverkoston tarina

Research objectives. The Special Education Strategy, the legislative change based on it, and the change in the Finnish National Core Curriculum for Pre-primary and Basic Education build the background for this study. An improvement initiative called KELPO was founded in 2008 to implement a new three-level support system in municipalities. To support this initiative, the Network of Intensified and Special Support in the Metropolitan Area was founded in 2010. The Network consists of 22 pilot schools from four metropolitan municipalities and the Centre for Educational Assessment at the University of Helsinki that carries out the developmental assessment of the initiative. The objective of my study was to form an overall view of the functioning of the Network. The data included interviews of 20 principals of the schools belonging to the Network. The interviews were conducted by the Centre for Educational Assessment in the autumn of 2010. The research question is: What do principals speak about the networking done inside and between the municipalities? Methods. I received the data as already transcribed for my use. I researched it using a narrative research approach. As a method I used both thematic reading and classifying narratives by the holistic-content. These methods belong under the analyze of narratives. I collected the narratives from the principals under themes that arose from the data delimited by my research question. The narrative analysis materialized by writing the research story, as a new story was built by the principals stories theme by theme. The classification of the narratives by the holistic-content method was realized according to what kind of a gatekeeper s role each principal had. With a gatekeeper I here mean the intermediary role of a principal between the school and outside world. In addition, I used the analysis of interactive production of the narrative when applicable. Results and conclusions. Explicit features in the story of the Network were the principals at least partial uncertainty of the purpose of the networking, lack of time and resources, changing of initiatives, and lack of continuity. Positive narratives about ownership and empowerment could also be found. Nonetheless, many of the preconditions for success described by the school reform and school networking theories were not fulfilled. According to the collective story, there was no shared goal or purpose, and nor were the needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness fulfilled. Three different kinds of gatekeepers were found in the data: The Exemplary ones, The Survivors and The Losers. The distinguishing factor turned out to be sharing of information at school. Based on the narratives, the schools with principals taking care of sharing information were the most active in partaking in networking.

We Are All Georgians: The Neoconservative Narrative on the Russia-Georgia War

In this thesis I examine the U.S. foreign policy discussion that followed the war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008. In the politically charged setting that preceded the presidential elections, the subject of the debate was not only Washington's response to the crisis in the Caucasus but, more generally, the direction of U.S. foreign policy after the presidency of George W. Bush. As of November 2010, the reasons for and consequences of the Russia-Georgia war continue to be contested. My thesis demonstrates that there were already a number of different stories about the conflict immediately after the outbreak of hostilities. I want to argue that among these stories one can discern a “neoconservative narrative” that described the war as a confrontation between the East and the West and considered it as a test for Washington’s global leadership. I draw on the theory of securitization, particularly on a framework introduced by Holger Stritzel. Accordingly, I consider statements about the conflict as “threat texts” and analyze these based on the existing discursive context, the performative force of the threat texts and the positional power of the actors presenting them. My thesis suggests that a notion of narrativity can complement Stritzel’s securitization framework and take it further. Threat texts are established as narratives by attaching causal connections, meaning and actorship to the discourse. By focusing on this process I want to shed light on the relationship between the text and the context, capture the time dimension of a speech act articulation and help to explain how some interpretations of the conflict are privileged and others marginalized. I develop the theoretical discussion through an empirical analysis of the neoconservative narrative. Drawing on Stritzel’s framework, I argue that the internal logic of the narrative which was presented as self-evident can be analyzed in its historicity. Asking what was perceived to be at stake in the conflict, how the narrative was formed and what purposes it served also reveals the possibility for alternative explanations. My main source material consists of transcripts of think tank seminars organized in Washington, D.C. in August 2008. In addition, I resort to the foreign policy discussion in the mainstream media.

News Media, Crime and Fear of Violence

Finland witnessed a surge in crime news reporting during the 1990s. At the same time, there was a significant rise in the levels of fear of crime reported by surveys. This research examines whether and how the two phenomena: news media and fear of violence were associated with each other. The dissertation consists of five sub-studies and a summary article. The first sub-study is a review of crime reporting trends in Finland, in which I have reviewed prior research and used existing Finnish datasets on media contents and crime news media exposure. The second study examines the association between crime media consumption and fear of crime when personal and vicarious victimization experiences have been held constant. Apart from analyzing the impact of crime news consumption on fear, media effects on general social trust are analyzed in the third sub-study. In the fourth sub-study I have analyzed the contents of the Finnish Poliisi-TV programme and compared the consistency of the picture of violent crime between official data sources and the programme. In the fifth and final sub-study, the victim narratives of Poliisi-TV s violence news contents have been analyzed. The research provides a series of results which are unprecedented in Finland. First, it observes that as in many other countries, the quantity of crime news supply has increased quite markedly in Finland. Second, it verifies that exposure to crime news is related to being worried about violent victimization and avoidance behaviour. Third, it documents that exposure to TV crime reality-programming is associated with reduced social trust among Finnish adolescents. Fourth, the analysis of Poliisi-TV shows that it transmits a distorted view of crime when contrasted with primary data sources on crime, but that this distortion is not as big as could be expected from international research findings and epochal theories of sociology. Fifth, the portrayals of violence victims in Poliisi-TV do not fit the traditional ideal types of victims that are usually seen to dominate crime media. The fact that the victims of violence in Poliisi-TV are ordinary people represents a wider development of the changing significance of the crime victim in Finland. The research concludes that although the media most likely did have an effect on the rising public fears in the 1990s, the mechanism was not as straight forward as has often been claimed. It is likely that there are other factors in the fear-media equation that are affecting both fear levels and crime reporting and that these factors are interactive in nature. Finally, the research calls for a re-orientation of media criminology and suggests more emphasis on the positive implications of crime in the media. Keywords: crime, media, fear of crime, violence, victimization, news

Valkolakki vai haalarit, vaiko molemmat : Koulutuspolitiikan vaikuttajien näkemykset toisen asteen kehityksestä

In the present research Finnish education policy-makers describe the transformation in upper secondary education in the 1990s. They answered questions related to equality and all-round education. The timeline of the research extends from the early development of the welfare state and equality policy to the 2000s. Its focus is on upper secondary education, which, in this paper, denotes general upper secondary education and vocational upper secondary education. The chronological analysis proceeds from the education committee of 1971 up to the youth education experiment of the 1990s. The voices of the then policy-makers are heard in this research. They were the ones who planned the reforms and/or made the decisions. This being the case, the interviewees include cabinet ministers, permanent secretaries, representatives of organisations and the research community as well as civil servants. The research material can be construed as contextual interpretations of the past, influenced by both the times and places where the narrations were given. The persons interviewed described their experiences and views on education policy. In their narratives they illustrated the transformation that occurred in relation to equality and all-round education. The narrative interviews painted a picture of the upper secondary education transformation and the matriculation examination as having a slowing effect on education policy reforms. It was not until the 1990s when the said examination began to make a difference to students in vocational upper secondary education Those interviewed named the persons who, in their opinion, had the most say in Finnish education policy. This list comprised a small circle of people who more or less agreed on the grand values of education policy, i.e. all-round education and equality. Only a small minority represented a radical view of equality, being true believers in universal upper secondary education implemented in accordance with comprehensive school reform. Finnish education policy was led from the perspective of traditional conception of equality from the 1970s to the 1980s. The transformation finally occurred in the 1990s when equality was understood to mean individual needs and the right to choose. As was the case with matriculation education, the insistence on all-round education also hampered the development of universal upper secondary education. The interviews revealed that any attempts to increase the academic syllabus of vocational education caused organisations as well as other policy-makers to oppose such development well into the 1980s. It was not until the youth education experiment of the 1990s that vocational education finally carved a path to higher education, when the polytechnic schools were made permanent. Three principal groups of key players emerged in the research: ministers of education, civil servants and organisations. The research showed that the ministers and civil servant education policy-makers of the 1990s also included only handful women. The circle of policy-makers was small and represented similar schools of thought. In the 1970s era of government committees, representatives of organisations actively participated in education policy. When the committee establishment was discontinued, this eliminated lobbying venues for the organisations. Nonetheless, the organisations regained their policymaking status in the 1990s. New lobbying organisations included the Finnish Entrepreneurs and the Union of Finnish Upper Secondary School Students. However, in contrast to the 1970s, only rarely would individuals rise from the ranks of organisations to the cadre of policy-makers. The interviewees had a twofold view of neo-liberalism Contrary to other policy-makers, representatives of the research community and organisations concur that neo-liberalism did exist in education policy decision-making in the 1990s.

A Shared European History? Perceptions of Imperialism and Islam in Matriculation Examination Essays and History Textbooks

The European Union (EU) is faced with a continuous decrease in public support. There is a tension between the growing Euroscepticism and the concurrent academic discourse of a shared European identity. Informed and inspired by the current debates, this Master’s Thesis investigates the potential of a shared past to create shared identity. It also addresses the logic of cultural exclusion that is often connected to collective cultural identities. The source material is a combination of exam essays, written as answers to the history tests in the Finnish matriculation examinations of 2005-2008, and upper secondary school history textbooks. From the sources, current perceptions of Islam (as Europe’s Other) and the age of imperialism (as a debated period from Europe’s past) among the youth are studied. Through the analysis the thesis aims to indicate the level of consensus within the pupils’ identification with the past and with Europe. This objective is pursued through examining the pupils’ perceptions of Europe’s past and its relationship to non-European cultures and countries as they are manifested in the essays, and reflecting upon the level of influence that history textbooks as representatives of national hegemonic historical narratives might have on the contents, framings and emphases with and through which the pupils approach, imagine, and reproduce Europe’s past. The approach is based on previous research on the presence of history and the field of textbook research. The theoretical categories with which the sources are analyzed are derived primarily from literature on identity, European integration, history and memory, postcolonial criticism, and theorizations of European identity. Results of the research project suggest that the rhetoric of European superiority, despite its apparent demise, still resonates in contemporary understandings of Europeanness. Dominant perceptions of imperialism comprise of European agency and colonial submission, dominant perceptions of the Islamic world of fundamental difference. Identification with European history among the Finnish youth is rather shallow when examined through perceptions of imperialism; the Islamic world is perceived as Other and its representations are dominated by recent and contemporary international relations.

Embedded Storytelling and Gender Negotiations in Githa Hariharan's First Three Novels

This thesis treats Githa Hariharan s first three novels The Thousand Faces of Night (1992), The Ghosts of Vasu Master (1994) and When Dreams Travel (1999) as a trilogy, in which Hariharan studies the effects of storytelling from different perspectives. The thesis examines the relationship between embedded storytelling and the primary narrative level, the impact of character-bound storytelling on personal development and interpersonal relationships. Thus, I assume that an analysis of the instabilities between characters, and tensions between sets of values introduced through storytelling displays the development of the central characters in the novels. My focus is on the tensions between different sets of values and knowledge systems and their impact on the gender negotiations. The tensions are articulated through a resistance and/or adherence to a cultural narrative, that is, a formula, which underlies specific narratives. Conveyed or disputed by embedded storytelling, the cultural narrative circumscribes what it means to be gendered in Hariharan s novels. The analysis centres on how the narratee in The Thousand Faces of Night and the storyteller in The Ghosts of Vasu Master relate to and are affected by the storytelling, and how they perceive their gendered positions. The analysis of the third novel When Dreams Travel focuses on storytelling, and its relationship to power and representation. I argue that Hariharan's use of embedded storytelling is a way to renegotiate and even reconceptualise gender. Hariharan s primary concern in all three novels is the tensions between tradition or repetition, and change, and how they affect gender. Although the novels feature ancient mythical heroes, mice and flies, or are set in a fantasy world of jinnis and ghouls, they are, I argue, deeply concerned with contemporary issues. Whereas the first novel questions the demands set by family and society on the individual, the second strives to articulate an ethical relationship between the self and the other. The third novel examines the relationship between representation and power. These issues could not be more contemporary, and they loom large over both the regional and global arenas.