Abstract
Since its inception with Wayne C. Booth and the development of James Phelan, narrative ethics has evolved since its emergence in the 1990s into a research framework encompassing diverse critical methodolgies. In contrast to Booth's emphasis on the author's intention and Phelan's focus on the reader's reading ethics, Paul Ricoeur develops a creative view of placing the author and the reader in an “ethical laboratory” constructed by the fictional narrative, shifting the focus from a single ethical subject to the dynamic process of generating the ethical significance of the author, the text and the reader. In addition to considering fictional narrative as an experimental site for schematizing the author's “thought” and implementing ethical inquiry, he also thinks that fictional narrative is a practical basis for readers to achieve the power of transformation “from text to action” by “appropriating” ethical experiments and practicing practical wisdom. Therefore, the creativity of this view is to consider fictional narrative as the experimental site for the ethical practice of authors and readers, thus offering a new research idea for the ethical analysis of narratology.
Keywords
ethical laboratory, good life, discordant concordance, practical wisdom
Recommended Citation
Xiao, Wenting. 2024. "Fictional Narrative as an “Ethical Laboratory”: A Study of Paul Ricoeur's Narrative Ethics." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 44, (2). https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol44/iss2/23
