… narrative is the specific form taken by a written history to counter the permanence of vision. […] Narrative asserts the the power of men [sic] to be born, develop, and die, the tendency of institutions to change, the likelihood that modernity and contemporaneity will finally overtake “classical” civilisations; above all, it asserts that the domination of reality by vision is no more than a will to power, a will to truth and interpretation, and not an objective condition of history. Narrative, in short, introduces an opposing point of view, perspective, consciousness to the unitary web of vision; it violates the serene Apollonian fictions asserted by vision.

From Orientalism by Edward W. Saïd; quote on p.240 of the 2003 Penguin edition.