Kristendommen er ikke nogen 'stor fortælling'

H.J.L. Jensen: “Christianity is not a ‘great narrative’. A structural note on a typology of universal narratives” and P. Aa. Brandt: “Narrative and linguistic event. Comments on H.J.L. Jensen’s structural note”.Jean-François Lyotard has recently focused on the demise of the “great narratives”. But what is the nature of these narratives? Jensen’s note establishes an inventory of 8 types of “universal narratives” based on three axes: A) fall vs. erection, B) mythology vs. eschatology, and C) human vs. inhuman. The “great narrative” can be characterized as a “human-erective-eschatology” whereas the core of the Christian narrative is “inhuman-erective-mythology”. The 8 types can as well be coordinated or embedded in different ways.In his comment, Brandt reformulates Jensen’s conclusions into a semiotic, generative theory of narrative sequence which involves three levels: 1) Jensen’s (A) is related to the actantial level, 2) his (B) to the discursive level, and 3) his (C) to the enunciative level. The 8 types can be rearranged in the light of the theory of speech-acts in which the addressed is attributed a lack (or deficiency?) either in the present or the future. This provides two main types of “narrative linguistic events”: the promise, which moves from the dysphoric present to the euphoric future; and the threat, which moves from the euphoric present to the dysphoric future. These linguistic events are embedded in narrative sequences. Religion as preaching is a combination of promise and threat which cannot avoid “narrativising” the addressed in the small, but tendentious, as well as in the great narratives.Hans J. Lundager Jensen og Per Aage Brandt