Book excerpt: Narrative is a pioneer concept in our trans-disciplinary age. For decades, it has been one of the most successful catchwords in literature, history, cultural studies, philosophy, and health studies. While the expansion of narrative studies has led to significant advances across a number of fields, the travels for the concept itself have been a somewhat more complex. Has the concept of narrative passed intact from literature to sociology, from structuralism to therapeutic practice or to the study of everyday storytelling? In this volume, philosophers, psychologists, literary theorists, sociolinguists, and sociologists use methodologically challenging test cases to scrutinize the types, transformations, and trajectories of the concept and theory of narrative. The book powerfully argues that narrative concepts are profoundly relevant in the understanding of life, experience, and literary texts. Nonetheless, it emphasizes the vast contextual differences and contradictions in the use of the concept.