For the past forty years The Nature of Narrative has been a seminal work for literary students, teachers, writers, and scholars. Countering the tendency to view the novel as the paradigm case of literary narrative, authors Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg in the original edition offered a compelling history of the genre narrative from antiquity to the twentieth-century, even as they carried out their main task of describing and analyzing the nature of narrative's main elements: meaning, character, plot, and point of view. Their history emphasized the broad sweep of literary narrative from ancient times to the contemporary period, and it included a chapter on the oral heritage of written narrative and an appendix on the interior monologue in ancient texts.
The fortieth anniversary edition of this groundbreaking work has been revised and expanded to include a new preface and a lengthy chapter on developments in narrative theory since 1966 by James Phelan. This chapter describes the principles and practices of structuralist, cognitive, feminist, and rhetorical approaches to narrative, paying special attention to their work on plot, character, and narrative discourse.
A continued leader in the field of narrative studies, The Nature of Narrative offers unique and invaluable histories of both narrative and narrative theory.

For the past forty years The Nature of Narrative has been a seminal work for literary students, teachers, writers, and scholars. Countering the tendency to view the novel as the paradigm case of literary narrative, authors Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg in the original edition offered a compelling history of the genre narrative from antiquity to the twentieth-century, even as they carried out their main task of describing and analyzing the nature of narrative's main elements: meaning, character, plot, and point of view. Their history emphasized the broad sweep of literary narrative from ancient times to the contemporary period, and it included a chapter on the oral heritage of written narrative and an appendix on the interior monologue in ancient texts.
The fortieth anniversary edition of this groundbreaking work has been revised and expanded to include a new preface and a lengthy chapter on developments in narrative theory since 1966 by James Phelan. This chapter describes the principles and practices of structuralist, cognitive, feminist, and rhetorical approaches to narrative, paying special attention to their work on plot, character, and narrative discourse.
A continued leader in the field of narrative studies, The Nature of Narrative offers unique and invaluable histories of both narrative and narrative theory.

Icelandic literary culture was one of the richest and most important in the medieval world. Texts that were written in Iceland during this period include Njal's Saga, Egil's Saga, The Vinland Sagas, as well as the Comic Sagas and Tales collected in this volume. Comic Sagas and Tales brings together the finest comic stories from medieval Iceland. With feuding families and moments of grotesque violence, the sagas see such classic mythological figures as murdered fathers, disguised beggars, corrupt chieftains and avenging sons do battle with axes, words and cunning. The tales, meanwhile, follow heroes and comical fools through dreams, voyages and religious conversions in Iceland and beyond. Shaped by Iceland's oral culture and their conversion to Christianity, these stories are works of ironic humour and stylistic innovation. In the introduction to these new translations, Vidar Hreinsson examines how the stories satirised old-style sagas while exploiting their classic themes of quests and revenge. This edition also includes a map, glossary, index of characters, suggested further reading and notes.