From epic to limerick, novel to anecdote, literary narratives engage and entertain us. From autobiography and biography to accounts of familial generations, narratives define communities. Myths and histories loom large in religious traditions as well. Recently, the importance of narrative to ethics and religion has become a pervasive theme in several scholarly disciplines. In the essays presented here, a distinguished roster of scholars addresses a range of issues associated with this theme, focusing especially on questions concerning narrative's contribution to knowledge.

This anthology serves as a literary map to guide readers through the varied geography of contemporary Italian fiction. Massimo Riva has gathered English-language translations of short stories and excerpts from novels that were originally published in Italian between 1975 and 2001. As an expression of a communal contemporary condition, these narratives suggest a new sensibility and a new way of seeing, exploring, and inhabiting the world, in writing.

The counter-epic is a literary style that developed in reaction to imperialist epic conventions as a means of scrutinizing the consequences of foreign conquest of dominated peoples. It also functioned as a transitional literary form, a bridge between epic narratives of military heroics and novelistic narratives of commercial success. In Discourses of Empire, Barbara Simerka examines the representation of militant Christian imperialism in early modern Spanish literature by focusing on this counter-epic discourse.

A historical review of the most important scientific controversies that have shaped our knowledge of dinosaurs since their discovery in the 1820s. It explores the social, philosophical and ideological forces that contributed to the various disputes and presents narratives of dinosaur discoveries.

This collection of essays examines the interrelations between illness, disability, health, society, and culture. The contributors examine how "narratives" have emerged and been utilized within these areas to help those who have experienced d injury, disability, dementia, pain, grief, or psychological trauma to express their stories. Encompassing clinical case studies, ethnographic field studies and autobiographical case studies, Health, Illness and Culture offers a broad overview and critical analysis of the present state of "illness narratives" within the fields of health and social welfare.