With the emergence of postclassical narratology, it has become necessary to take stock of ongoing developments against the backdrop of established aspects of research in the field. The contributions to this volume employ some of the recent epistemological and methodological models in an attempt to resolve a number of unsettled issues while charting out potential vistas for new themes in narrative studies.

By redefining established topics of narratology, research has become highly diversified. The contributions to this volume neither synthesize developments nor work from shared postulates, but represent a fresh look at ongoing issues. Some scrutinize focalisation in a linguistic framework or in a poststructuralist vein; others take on reliable and unreliable narration in a pronominal perspective or the "unaddressed" reader who upsets the tidy schemes of narrative communication. Also outlined are a possible worlds approach to narrative time, a systematic treatment of metanarrative and a transgeneric application of narratology to poetry. The sequential ordering of narratives as a way of controlling reader response is examined in one article and in another is seen to elicit intertextual configurations. Both divergent and complementary, the contributions seek to integrate into narratological categories and methods the dynamic processes of narrative itself.

This anthology brings together essential essays on major facets of narrative dynamics, that is, the means by which "narratives traverse their often unlikely routes from beginning to end." It includes the most widely cited and discussed essays on narrative beginnings, temporality, plot and emplotment, sequence and progression, closure, and frames. The text is designed as a basic reader for graduate courses in narrative and critical theory across disciplines including literature, drama and theatre, and film. Narrative Dynamics includes such classic exponents as E. M. Forster on story and plot; Vladimir Propp on the structure of the folktale; R. S. Crane on plot; Boris Tomashevsky on story, plot, and, motif; M. M. Bakhtin on the chronotope; and Gerard Genette on narrative time. Richardson highlights essential feminist essays by Nancy K. Miller on plot and plausibility, Rachel Blau Duplessis on closure, and Susan Winnett on narrative and desire. These are complimented by newer pieces by Susan Stanford Friedman on spatialization and Robyn Warhol on serial fiction. Other major contributions include Edward Said on beginnings, Hayden White on historical narrative, Peter Brooks on plot, Paul Ricoeur on time, D. A. Miller on closure, James Phelan on progression, and Jacques Derrida on the frame. Recent essays from the perspective of cultural studies, postmodernism, and artificial intelligence bring this collection right up to the present.

This revised and expanded handbook concisely introduces narrative form to advanced students of fiction and creative writing, with refreshed references and new discussions of cognitive approaches to narrative, nonfiction, and narrative emotions.

While narrative fracturing, multiplicity, and experimentalism are commonly associated with modernist and postmodern texts, they have largely been understudied in Victorian literature. Narrative Bonds: Multiple Narrators in the Victorian Novel focuses on the centrality of these elements and address the proliferation of multiple narrators in Victorian novels. In Narrative Bonds, Alexandra Valint explores the ways in which the Victorian multi-narrator form moves toward the unity of vision across characters and provides inclusivity in an era of expanding democratic rights and a growing middle class. Integrating narrative theory, gothic theory, and disability studies with analyses of works by Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Wilkie Collins, Emily Brontë, and Bram Stoker, this comprehensive and illuminating study illustrates the significance and impact of the multi-narrator structure in Victorian novels.

. . . this is a first rate book. It draws on a wide range of reading philosophy, economics and politics and teases out a number of important ideas. . . for academics and postgraduates it surely will be essential reading and I think has pushed the study of public policy forward. Michael Connolly, Political Studies Review In The Dynamics of Public Policy, Adrian Kay sets out the crucial methodological, theoretical and empirical implications of two important trends in the social sciences: a frequently expressed ambition for analysis of movies not stills and the regular observation that policy, politics and governance is becoming more complex. Beginning with a discussion of the centrality of temporality, change and history to the social sciences, he develops the provocative claim that existing models of the policy process are of limited value in understanding and explaining policy dynamics. Instead, the author argues that it is only through structured narratives that we can really understand and explain complex policy histories. He sets out a methodology for structuring policy narratives and illustrates the claims of the book through four detailed case studies: health policy and pharmaceutical regulation in the UK; and agricultural policy and budget policy in the EU. Adrian Kay s book will appeal to academics in the fields of policy analysis, public administration and public sector management as well as political science and political theory.

The Routledge Companion to Narrative Theory brings together top scholars in the field to explore the significance of narrative to pressing social, cultural, and theoretical issues. How does narrative both inform and limit the way we think today? From conspiracy theories and social media movements to racial politics and climate change future scenarios, the reach is broad. This volume is distinctive for addressing the complicated relations between the interdisciplinary narrative turn in the academy and the contemporary boom of instrumental storytelling in the public sphere. The scholars collected here explore new theories of causality, experientiality, and fictionality; challenge normative modes of storytelling; and offer polemical accounts of narrative fiction, nonfiction, and video games. Drawing upon the latest research in areas from cognitive sciences to complexity theory, the volume provides an accessible entry point for those new to the myriad applications of narrative theory and a point of departure for new scholarship.

Provides a comprehensive account of the structural and linguistic distinctiveness of stories told in the first-person plural, describing its features and rhetorical effects.

George Eliot wrote that "man cannot do without the make-believe of a beginning." Beginnings, it turns out, can be quite unusual, complex, and deceptive. The first major volume to focus on this critical but neglected topic, this collection brings together theoretical studies and critical analyses of beginnings in a wide range of narrative works spanning several centuries and genres. The international and interdisciplinary scope of these essays, representing every major theoretical perspective--including feminist, cognitive, postcolonial, postmodern, rhetorical, ethnic, narratological, and hypert.

'A dense, challenging and important book.' Philip French Observer 'At the very least, this blockbuster is probably the best single volume history of Hollywood we're likely to get for a very long time.' Paul Kerr City Limits 'Persuasively argued, the book is also packed with facts, figures and photographs.' Nigel Andrews Financial Times Acclaimed for their breakthrough approach, Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson analyze the basic conditions of American film-making as a historical institution and consider to what extent Hollywood film production constitutes a systematic enterprise, in both its style and its business operations. Despite differences of director, genre or studio, most Hollywood films operate within a set of shared assumptions about how a film should look and sound. Such assumptions are neither natural nor inevitable; but because classical-style films have been the type most widely seen, they have come to be accepted as the 'norm' of film-making and viewing. The authors show how these classical conventions were formulated and standardized, and how they responded to the arrival of sound, colour, widescreen ratios and stereophonic sound. They argue that each new technological development has served a function within an existing narrational system. The authors also examine how the Hollywood cinema standardized the film-making process itself. They describe how, over the course of its history, Hollywood developed distinct modes of production in a constant search for maximum efficiency, predictability and novelty. Set apart by its combination of theoretical analysis and empirical evidence, this book is the standard work on the classical Hollywood cinema style of film-making from the silent era to the 1960s. Now available in paperback, it is a 'must' for film students, lecturers and all those seriously interested in the development of the film industry.