Jessica Buhler ~Stories can make a location a place (Lane)

While writing about the Grotto of Massabielle, I realized how it tied into what Lane was talking about, “If we omit the storied experience of the place (the shared subjectivity of its human and more-than-human participants), we lose the power it exercises on the imagination” (Lane 59). Can you have a place without a story? I think so, but it is only an unknown location, not an actual place per say. I think a location is unknown until it is discovered and then it becomes a place. The reason being is because the founders of that particular place will tell stories about it, creating images and ideas that could exceed the imagination of many. So why are stories so important? Is it just a way to let our imaginations run freely? Stories reveal the history of a place, just like the poetry of ancient Greece reveal the history of ancient times, many expressed in rather imaginative ways. For example, the ancient poetry of Greece, like The Iliad was an epic poem about Troy. The stories told in the poetry created Troy as a place. The place, because of the stories, seemed so real that Henry Schliemann sought to discover Troy and, in fact, he did. The Grotto of Massabielle was technical created by the stories that Bernadette told of seeing the Virgin Mary and because she was a transcendent being and see as holy the place became not only a place but a sacred place.

If there is no story of a place then there is nothing for the imagination to grab hold of and create a place based on the story. For instance, J.R.R Tolken imagined middle earth, but not before telling the story that in the end created it. The characteristics of people in a story can help to create a place that they live in. Would imagination still exist if there were no stories to promote creative thoughts? I feel that it would not exist because stories are what create a place and places are what created the world as we know it. Think about it, we hear stories of foreign places all the time yet we never stop to really think, “what if there were no stories?” I can only imagine that we would most definitely ‘lose the power it exercises on the imagination.’