Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory

The past several decades have seen an explosion of interest in narrative, with this multifaceted object of inquiry becoming a central concern in a wide range of disciplinary fields and research contexts. As accounts of what happened to particular people in particular circumstances and with specific consequences, stories have come to be viewed as a basic human strategy for coming to terms with time, process, and change. However, the very predominance of narrative as a focus of interest across multiple disciplines makes it imperative for scholars, teachers, and students to have access to a comprehensive reference resource.

As a comprehensive one-stop resource for students and researchers in the many disciplines drawing on narrative theory and analysis, the Encyclopedia promises to be a milestone in the development of the field.
The past several decades have seen an explosion of interest in narrative, with this multifaceted object of inquiry becoming a central concern in a wide range of disciplinary fields and research contexts. As accounts of what happened to particular people in particular circumstances and with specific consequences, stories have come to be viewed as a basic human strategy for coming to terms with time, process, and change.
However, the very predominance of narrative as a focus of interest across multiple disciplines makes it imperative for scholars, teachers, and students to have access to a comprehensive reference resource.

actant; action theory; adaptation; address; addresser and addressee; adolescent narrative; advertisements; African narrative; agency; allegory; alteration; alterity; anachrony; analepsis; ancient theories of narrative (Western); ancient theories of narrative (non-Western); anecdote; animated film; annals; anti-narrative; apology; archetypal patterns; architext; Artificial Intelligence and narrative; atomic and molecular narratives; attributive discourse; audience; Australian Aboriginal narrative; authentication; author; authorial narrative situation; autobiography; autodiegetic narration; autofiction; backstory; ballad; Biblical narrative; Bildungsroman; biography; biological foundations of narrative; blog (weblog); catachresis; catharsis; causality; character; Chicago school; children's stories (narratives written for children); children's storytelling; Chinese narrative; chronicle; chronotope; cinéroman; closure; codes for reading; cognitive narratology; coincidence; comics and graphic novel; coming-out story; commentary; communication in narrative; communication studies and narrative; composite novel; computational approaches to narrative; computer games and narrative; concretisation; confessional narrative; conflict; Constance school; contextualism (in historiography); conversational storytelling; counterfactual history; courtroom narrative; cultural-studies approaches to narrative; cyberpunk fiction; dance and narrative; deconstructive approaches to narrative; defamiliarisation; deixis; denarration; description; desire; detective fiction; dialogism; dialogue in the novel; diary; didactic narrative; diegesis; digital narrative; discourse analysis (Foucault); discourse analysis (linguistics); disnarrated, the; distance; drama and narrative; dramatic irony; dramatic monologue; dramatic situations; dream narrative; dual-voice hypothesis; dystopian fiction; eco-narratives; écriture féminine; education and narrative; ekphrasis; embedding; emic and etic; emotion and narrative; emplotment; encyclopedic novel; epic; epiphany; episode; epistolary novel; ergodic literature; ethical turn; ethnographic approaches to narrative; events and event-types; evolution of narrative forms; existent; experiencing-I; experientiality; exposition; extradiegetic narrator; fable; fabula; fairy tale; family chronicle; fantastic, the; fantasy; feminist narratology; fiction, theories of; Figura (Auerbach); figural narration; film narrative; first-person narration; focalization; folklore; folktale; foregrounding; formalism; frame theory; framed narrative; free indirect discourse; frequency; Freytag's triangle; function (Jakobson); function (Propp); gapping; gaze; gender studies; genealogy; genre fiction; genre theory in film studies; genre theory in narrative studies; gesture; gossip; Gothic novel; grand récit; graphic presentation as expressive device; hagiography; hermeneutics; hero; heterodiegetic narration; heteroglossia; historical novel; historical present; historicis; historiographic metafiction; historiographic narratology; historiography; Holocaust narrative; homodiegetic narration; horizon of expectations; horror narrative; humour studies and narrative; hybrid genres; hybridity; hypertext; hypertext and hypotext (Genette); hypodiegetic narrative; identity and narrative; ideology and narrative; image and narrative; immersion; implied author; implied reader; in medias res; indeterminacy; institutional narrative; intentionality; interactive fiction; interactivity; interdisciplinary approaches to narrative; interior monologue; intermediality; intertextuality; intradiegetic narrator; irony; isotopy; Japanese narrative; joke; journalism; law and narrative; legal fiction; legend; leitmotif; letters as narrative; life story; linguistic approaches to narrative; logic of narrative; magical realism; Marxist approaches to narrative; master narrative; media and narrative; mediacy; medicine and narrative; medieval narrative; memory; mental mapping of nar