You should read the print version of Triumph of the Narrative, even
if you heard him on "Ideas" on CBC.
In the essays, Robert Fulford documents narrative approaches to
history, in (popular) fiction and rumour, even connecting one
narrative to the Southern Plantation secessionists of the Civil
War. According to Mark Twain and Fulford, the Southern planters
adapted their own knighthood and chivalry cult, borrowing heavily
from Walter Scott's published legends of romance.
On "Ideas," I caught the bit about the literary devices (like the
unreliable narrator in fiction). But I did not see how carefully
Fulford related his theme to the post-modernists and other severe
critics of narrative style and device. In these essays, Robert
Fulford patronizes the deconstructionists pitilessly and without
grace. But he also points directly to where romantic narrative,
both fiction and history, has led civilization monstrously astray.
And he is in good company.
Fulford writes with directness and with craft. But I suspect him of
being more of a dialectician than he admits.
This little volume stimulates thought and it renewed my interest in
ways of thinking that I had recently neglected. I am grateful to
Fulford.