A European Storyteller? Collective Narration in John Berger's Into Their Labours

Based on the understanding of cultures as ‘narrative communities’,
this article explores the aesthetic figurations of Europe in John Berger’s Into Their
Labours (1979–1990) and demonstrates how the trilogy’s generic hybridity, multiperspectivity, and collective narration support Berger’s creation of a ‘communal
voice’. Adopting a cultural narratological approach, the case study first shows
how interconnecting centripetal and diverging centrifugal narrative forces create
a tentative sense of coherence akin to the short story cycle, while the trilogy’s
macrostructural pattern transforms the individual stories into a master ‘narrative
of crisis’. Secondly, an analysis of perspective structure and narrative voice in
the three parts reveals that, in the trilogy as a whole, peasant culture emerges as
a narrative community. Thirdly, in scrutinizing spatial markers as a means to
connect the modernization processes depicted by Berger with Europe and European
mobilities, the article draws attention to the trilogy’s previously neglected
European dimension. Narrating Europe from a transnational perspective, Berger
clearly counters the longstanding traditions of British Euroskepticism and insularity
and, indeed, can be seen a ‘European storyteller’.