Multivalent narratives: Extending the narrative paradigm with insights from ancient Indian philosophical texts

Abstract

This study discusses the ways in which ancient Indian narratives use ambiguity and contradiction to enshrine new values and stories for potential acceptance by cross‐cultural audiences. By examining two representative Indian didactic texts (gitas), the Avadhoota Gita and the Devi Gita, this inquiry explores how auditors are forced to reconstruct what these texts mean before they can evaluate them, thus exposing the auditors to powerful sources of novelty. The narrative paradigm espoused by Walter Fisher has been criticized as not allowing new possibilities into the lifeworld of the audience in the form of narratives espousing foreign values and beliefs. This study explicates how these multivalent narratives differ from polyvalent and polysemic narratives in their use of multiple value structures that force the audience to reconcile and reconstruct the various meanings within the text. This study culminates by revising the concepts of narrative probability and fidelity to allow for multivalent narratives that facilitate audience acceptance of new values and beliefs.