The author presents a groundbreaking theory of storytelling in this standard work and analyzes central narratological categories such as fiction, mimesis, author, reader, narrator, narrative perspective, text, story, narrative time, and more. He defines all the constitutive features of narrative texts, supplemented by a comprehensive bibliography and a narratological glossary. This compendium provides students as well as scholars from all fields of philology with a fundamental and essential terminological and theoretical toolkit. In the third edition, the theory of eventfulness has been significantly expanded, and the chapter on "narrative perspective" has been supplemented with a section on "perspective structure." Additionally, all chapters have been critically reviewed, revised where necessary, and expanded with discussions on current debates and references to recent publications.