Persons, characters, and the meaning of 'narrative'

Abstract

Narrative theories of personal identity have traditionally made an extensive use of the comparisons between literary characters and persons in order to illustrate their points. However, over the past decade there has been a significant amount of criticisms against these comparisons. In the present article I summarise all these criticisms and show that they depart from a formal notion of ʻnarrativeʼ that is completely alien to narrative theories. Thus, I rely on a cognitive notion of ʻnarrativeʼ that is closer to narrative theories to give an appropriate response to these criticisms.