Iconic and non-iconic aspects of storytelling

Abstract This chapter seeks to show how some of the features of textual organization found specifically in narrative texts strive to imitate the extra-literary conditions of telling and understanding stories, as well as the very nature of time experience and remembering in human beings. Through specific story structure, manner of being told (narrative mode), and positioning of the narrating agent, as well as the use of specific grammatical markers such as tense and aspect, the very organization of larger texts, such as those of narrative fiction, will be shown to be a clear manifestation of some iconic aspects of human phenomenal experience as it relates to temporality, memory, and the sharing of memories (real or imagined) through the act of storytelling.