Cambridge Companion to Narrative Theory

Narrative theory is essential to everything from history to lyric poetry, from novels to the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Narrative theory explores how stories work and how we make them work. This Companion is both an introduction and a contribution to the field. It presents narrative theory as an approach to understanding all kinds of cultural production: from literary texts to historiography, from film and videogames to philosophical discourse. It takes the long historical view, outlines essential concepts, and reflects on the way narrative forms connect with and rework social forms. The volume analyzes central premises, identifies narrative theory's feminist foundations, and elaborates its significance to queer theory and issues of race. The specially commissioned essays are exciting to read, uniting accessibility and rigor, traditional concerns with a renovated sense of the field as a whole, and analytical clarity with stylistic dash. Topical and substantial, The Cambridge Companion to Narrative Theory is an engaging resource on a key contemporary concept.

Matthew Garrett is Associate Professor of English and American Studies at Wesleyan University, Connecticut where he directs the Certificate in Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory. He is the author of Episodic Poetics: Politics and Literary Form after the Constitution (2014), and essays in American Literary History, American Quarterly, Critical Inquiry, ELH, the Journal of Cultural Economy, and Radical History Review, among other journals.