2.1 The SNSF Project 'Life (Beyond) Writing': Illness Narratives

The growing interest in and awareness of the function and role of narratives in our lives has affected almost all academic disciplines and scientific research communities. The study reported in this book is part of a larger, interdisciplinary research project that was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) from 2009 to 2013 and also has 'narrative' as its central theme. It is entitled 'Life (Beyond) Writing': Illness Narratives. It is worth explaining this title in detail. It refers to two key issues in our interdisciplinary research project: 'life writing' is an umbrella term (used in today's autobiography studies) that illustrates the prominence and diversity of autobiographical writing (e.g. diaries, letters, essays, memoirs, photography and websites); our lives are permeated with life-writing texts. Inserting the preposition 'beyond' between 'life' and 'writing' alludes, on the one hand, to an author potentially living on in his/her text after his/her death, which is even more pertinent in a narrative recounting the experience of a terminal illness. On the other hand, 'life beyond writing' also refers to the fact that writing/telling a narrative always involves an interaction between writer and reader/listener, and that the 'life' of a vis-à-vis who is not writing is inherently present.

'Narrative' is a broad term and there are different schools of narrative analysis that mainly involve literary theorists, linguists and anthropologists. In spite of the many different definitions (for overviews, see Fludernik, 2009; Gygax & Locher, 2015b; Lucius-Hoene & Deppermann, 2004; Martinez & Scheffel, 2002), there is a general agreement, namely that a narrative must 'involve the recounting of an event or events, [...]. And second that these events can be either real or fictitious' (Hawthorn, 2000: 225), or can even be projected, i.e. future stories (Georgakopoulou, 2007, 2013). Literary studies have traditionally explored issues of narrative, in particular related to prose texts.