An event, defined as the decisive turn, the surprising point in the plot of a narrative, constitutes its tellability, the motivation for reading it. This book describes a framework for a narratological definition of eventfulness and its dependence on the historical, socio-cultural and literary context. A series of fifteen analyses of British novels and tales, from late medieval and early modern times to the late 20th century, demonstrates how this concept can be put into practice for a new, specifically contextual interpretation of the central relevance of these texts. The examples include...

Stories do not actually exist in the (fictional or factual) world but are constituted, structured and endowed with meaning through the process of mediation, i.e. they are represented and transmitted through systems of verbal, visual or audio-visual signs. The terms usually proposed to describe aspects of mediation, especially perspective, point of view, and focalization, have yet to bring clarity to this field, which is of central importance, not only for narratology but also for literary and media studies. One crucial problem about mediation concerns the dimensions of its modeling...