This Gateway course introduces students to the study of narrative by examining fictional texts from different time periods, genres and media. We will analyse elements of form and style (including narrative voice, characterisation and plot) and consider some important questions to do with the ethics of storytelling: why tell a story? Why listen? Can stories be ‘fake’? During the course we will read examples of works from the major genres of fiction in English, and study some of the terms and concepts from narrative theory that will provide the tools for analysing them. Texts are likely to include tales from the Arabian Nights, Coleridge’s ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and texts by Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, Zora Neale Hurston and Zadie Smith. (A, B, F, G)