The Narrative Reader provides a comprehensive survey of theories of narrative from Plato to Post-Structuralism. The selection of texts is bold and broad, demonstrating the extent to which narrative permeates the entire field of literature and culture. It shows the ways in which narrative crosses disciplines, continents and theoretical perspectives and is a long overdue and welcome addition to the field. The Narrative Reader will fascinate students and researchers alike, providing a much needed point of entry to the increasingly complex field of narrative theory. Canonical texts are combined with texts which are difficult to get hold of elsewhere, and new translations and introductory material. The texts cover many crucial issues and topics including: * novelists on narrative * formalism * structuralism * responses to narratology * narrative and sexual difference * psychoanalysis * race * phenomenology * history Part three is designed to guide the student reader through the texts, including a helpful chronology of narrative theory, a glossary of narrative terms, and a checklist of narrative theories. Selected authors include: Plato, Aristotle, E.M.Forster, Henry James, Walter Benjamin, Mikhail Bahtkin, Frank Kermode, Claude Levi-Strauss, Jonathan Culler, Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Linda Hutcheon, Elaine Showalter, Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricouer, Frederic Jameson, Edward Said, Henry Louis Gates, Jr, Homi K. Bhahba.