Abstract
In this paper, I try to explain what stories in a narrative and their identities are. I argue
that stories are a form of narrative content relative to the interest. In section 1, I discuss
the story–discourse relationship in the tradition of narrative theory, pointing out that
it has been an indispensable premise of those theories, however it is argued that there
is some fundamental ambiguity about these concepts. Next, Section 2 examines the
literature about the topic of story in the modern aesthetic inquiry. I critically consider
the “identity theory” and “type theory” (A. Smuts), “event theory” (A. Takada), and “idea
theory” (W. D. Cray) and examine their problems. In section 3, in order to address those
issues, I propose the interest-relative theory, which identifies stories as interest-relative
narrative content by drawing on the theory of interest relativity of narrative content by
P. Lamarque.
