Prologue in the wilderness --
1. Towards a 'natural' narratology --
2. Natural narrative and other oral modes --
3. From the oral to the written: narrative structure before the novel --
4. The realist paradigm: consciousness, mimesis and the reading of the 'real' --
5. Reflectorization and figuralization: the malleability of language --
6. Virgin territories: the strategic expansion of deictic options --
7. Games with tellers, telling and told --
8. Natural Narratology --
In lieu of an epilogue.

This groundbreaking work of synthesis combines insights from literary theory and linguistics to provide a challenging new theory of narrative. The author argues that recent literature represents the epitome of a century-long developmental process