List of Illustrations.

The Elements.

Preface.

The Scope and Aims of This Book.

Storytelling Media and Modes of Narration.

Acknowledgments.

1. Getting Started: A Thumbnail Sketch of the Approach Developed in This Book.

Toward a Working Definition of Narrative.

Profiles of Narrative.

Narrative: Basic Elements.

2. Background and Context: Framing the Approach.

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Narrative and Narrative Theory.

Major Trends in Recent Scholarship on Narrative.

3. Back to the Elements: Narrative Occasions.

Situating Stories.

Sociolinguistic Approaches.

Positioning Theory.

The Narrative Communication Model.

Conclusion.

4. Temporality, Particularity, and Narrative: An Excursion into the Theory of Text Types.

From Contexts of Narration to Narrative as a Type of Text.

Text Types and Categorization Processes.

Narrative as a Text-Type Category: Descriptions vs. Stories vs. Explanations.

Summing up: Text Types, Communicative Competence, and the Role of Stories in Science.

5. The Third Element: Or, How to Build a Storyworld.

Narratives as Blueprints for Worldmaking.

Narrative Ways of Worldmaking.

Narrative Worlds: A Survey of Approaches.

Configuring Narrative Worlds: The WHAT, WHERE, and WHEN Dimensions of Storyworlds.

Worlds Disrupted: Narrativity and Noncanonical Events.

6. The Nexus of Narrative and Mind.

The Consciousness Factor.

Consciousness Across Narrative Genres.

Experiencing Minds: What It's Like, Qualia, Raw Feels.

Storied Minds: Narrative Foundations of Consciousness?.

Appendix.

Reproduction of Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" (1927).

Transcript of a Story Told during Face-to-Face Interaction: UFO or the Devil.

Pages from Daniel's Clowes's Graphic Novel Ghost World (1997).

Screenshots from Terry Zwigoff's Film Version of Ghost World (2001).

Glossary.

References.

Index