Over the last few decades, the field of narrative studies has been vastly expanded by a wide spectrum of innovations in the philologies and other disciplines including linguistics, history, theology, art history, psychology, media studies, medicine, law, education and more, and it has also seen a growing number of attempts to survey, order, and summarize the results of such studies in collections of essays, encyclopedias, companions, dictionaries, etc.

Against this background, the present Handbook of Narratology, now published in a considerably expanded second edition, offers a new type of systematic and comprehensive in-depth overview of recent and older research, taking account of the role played by the various disciplinary and national traditions in narrative studies. The 67 entries present international research devoted to the key terms, categories, and concepts of narratology in the form of full-length original articles structured in a parallel manner: each entry starts with a concise definition (1) followed by a more detailed explication of the term in question (2) and then proceeds, in its main part, to provide a differentiated description and critical discussion of the various approaches, positions, and controversies in their historical development (3), concluding with topics for further research (4) and a select bibliography (5). Where relevant, all entries are cross-referenced. They vary in length in accordance with the complexity of the respective concepts.