Understanding narratives with argumentation

In this paper, we show two important connections between computational models of narrative and computational models of argumentation. First, we show how argumentation techniques can be applied to enrich story understanding, especially where an understanding the story requires understanding of the motives of its characters. This also helps to explain how stories can themselves be seen as as arguments for a particular ordering on values within a value based argumentation framework. We illustrate our discussion using biblical parables, taking as our main example the parable of the Good Samaritan.