Since Aristotle, there has been an assumption that narrative is a representation of actions or sequences of events, that this representation aims to elicit emotions, and that well-formed narratives constitute a whole, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The nature, role, and relative importance of constituent notions like "sequence of events" and "plot" have been discussed repeatedly and, as a result, have become rather slippery. While recent developments in contemporary narrative theory, such as unnatural, transmedial, cognitive, and functionalist narratology, shed new light on these notions, Narrative Sequence in Contemporary Narratology goes beyond specific approaches to narrative, illuminating sequence and plot in all the diversity of their manifestations, forms, and functions. This volume, edited by Raphaël Baroni and Françoise Revaz, includes contributions from some of the most influential scholars in narrative studies: Alain Boillat, Peter Hühn, Emma Kafalenos, Franco Passalacqua, James Phelan, Federico Pianzola, John Pier, Gerald Prince, Brian Richardson, Marie-Laure Ryan, Eyal Segal, and Michael Toolan. Essays range in focus from musical narrativity and rhetorical narrative theory to comic strips and re-examinations of classical and postclassical narratology. All of the essays contribute fresh understandings of foundational concepts in the field of narratology.

The notion of possible worlds has played a decisive role in postclassical narratology by awakening interest in the nature of fictionality and in emphasizing the notion of world as a source of aesthetic experience in narrative texts. As a theory concerned with the opposition between the actual world that we belong to and possible worlds created by the imagination, possible worlds theory has made significant contributions to narratology. Possible Worlds Theory and Contemporary Narratology updates the field of possible worlds theory and postclassical narratology by developing this theoretical framework further and applying it to a range of contemporary literary narratives. This volume systematically outlines the theoretical underpinnings of the possible worlds approach, provides updated methods for analyzing fictional narrative, and profiles those methods via the analysis of a range of different texts, including contemporary fiction, digital fiction, video games, graphic novels, historical narratives, and dramatic texts. Through the variety of its contributions, including those by three originators of the subject area--Lubomír Doležel, Thomas Pavel, and Marie-Laure Ryan--Possible Worlds Theory and Contemporary Narratology demonstrates the vitality and versatility of one of the most vibrant strands of contemporary narrative theory.

Narratology has been flourishing in recent years thanks to investigations into a broad spectrum of narratives, at the same time diversifying its theoretical and disciplinary scope as it has sought to specify the status of narrative within both society and scientific research. The diverse endeavors engendered by this situation have brought narrative to the forefront of the social and human sciences and have generated new synergies in the research environment. Emerging Vectors of Narratology brings together 27 state-of-the-art contributions by an international panel of authors that provide insight into the wealth of new developments in the field. The book consists of two sections. "Contexts" includes articles that reframe and refine such topics as the implied author, narrative causation and transmedial forms of narrative; it also investigates various historical and cultural aspects of narrative from the narratological perspective. "Openings" expands on these and other questions by addressing the narrative turn, cognitive issues, narrative complexity and metatheoretical matters. The book is intended for narratologists as well as for readers in the social and human sciences for whom narrative has become a crucial matrix of inquiry.

The collection of articles compiled in this volume ponder narratological aspects, elements, and features and examine the extent to which the coinage “post-narratology” is applicable in contemporary literature, cultural studies, translation, etc. The contributors’ rethinking of narratology in relation to ethnicity, culture, history, and religion lead to significant implications as far as adherence to or departure from Western classical narratology is concerned. The notions of plot, storyline, point of view, voice, characters, narrators, and others, paradigmatically structured in the narratological classical model shaped by the Russian Formalists and polished by Tzvetan Todorov, Roland Barthes, and Gérard Genette, are stretched and modified to fit the cultural contexts of written works in various fields.

This handbook brings together 42 contributions by leading narratologists devoted to the study of narrative devices in European literatures from antiquity to the present. Each entry examines the use of a specific narrative device in one or two national literatures across the ages, whether in successive or distant periods of time. Through the analysis of representative texts in a range of European languages, the authors compellingly trace the continuities and evolution of storytelling devices, as well as their culture-specific manifestations. In response to Monika Fludernik’s 2003 call for a "diachronization of narratology," this new handbook complements existing synchronic approaches that tend to be ahistorical in their outlook, and departs from postclassical narratologies that often prioritize thematic and ideological concerns. A new direction in narrative theory, diachronic narratology explores previously overlooked questions, from the evolution of free indirect speech from the Middle Ages to the present, to how changes in narrative sequence encoded the shift from a sacred to a secular worldview in early modern Romance literatures. An invaluable new resource for literary theorists, historians, comparatists, discourse analysts, and linguists.

The first extended account of the concepts and history of unnatural narrative.

If we were to compile a list of frequently asked questions about narrative theory, we would put the following two at or near the top: 'what is narrative theory?' and 'how do different approaches to narrative relate to each other?' This book addresses both questions and, more significantly, also demonstrates the extent to which the questions themselves are intertwined.