On the Importance of Storytelling: Literature as Methexis

[ABSTRACT ONLY; NO FULL TEXT] This project consists of a short paper concerning aesthetic theory, followed by a creative piece wrought to exemplify this theory. In the aesthetic paper, I propose that the art of storytelling is among the highest of human vocations. I take as my starting point a brief survey of the (post) modern conception of language; that language is at bottom a social construct, and that any "truth" in language is mediated entirely by our human, all-too-human processes of cogitation. I draw primarily on the work of Nietzsche, Barthes, and Wittgenstein to do so. I use these considerations to illustrate how artistic forms such as surrealism (and the over-abstract in general) fail to achieve meaning insofar as they fail to craft a story or narrative in the "traditional" sense. To clarify these assertions, I avail myself of the critical perspectives of Walter Benjamin and Susan Sontag; in the first case, the art of storytelling is investigated against the backdrop of the modern onslaught of information, and in the second case, the idea that "art is its content" is challenged and replaced with the more sensuous understanding of art as form. Finally, I discuss the ways in which the spirit of science has corrupted the artistic faculty. Drawing primarily on the critical work of Oscar Wilde, I venture to explain how Life imitates Art, and that Art, through the representation and crafting of beauty, is the means by which things are made to appear real to us. The short, creative piece, titled, "The Mendicant" is a projected novella length work of fiction in which the principle themes of love and homelessness are intertwined. The work consists of anecdotes and vignettes framed (mostly) from the perspective of a protagonist, and these episodes are strung together with the primary goal of crafting a mood. Indeed, this piece is an exploration of art as form over content; the task to display takes precedent over the task to explain. The work avails itself of the artifice of storytelling in an attempt to make the ordinary appear mysterious, and the unnoticed of the everyday something noticeable.