"By far the best thing about this book is the mix of authors. We find first-rate literary theorists, psychologists, film critics, and linguists all writing about more or less the same thing but, of course, from very different perspectives. A nice mix of humanistic and empirical scholarship." — Colin Martindale, University of Maine"This book is very timely, in light of current developments in American stylistics. American scholars, except for researchers like Chatman, Gerald Prince, and Ann Banfield, have tended to shy away from global treatments of narrative, whereas this subject has been a focus of a great deal of research in Europe for the last twenty years. In addition, partly as a response to the excesses of so-called literary theory, interest has mounted in a more empirical approach to literary analysis. This volume speaks to both of these developments. It will constitute an important statement within an emergent sub-discipline of stylistics, and should help alter the terms of current debate over literary theory." — Donald C. Freeman, University of Southern California