This panel session for RSA 2026 in San Francisco invites proposals for papers on early modern literature and narrative theory, broadly conceived. Papers might consider narrative perspective, focalization, and free indirect discourse; formalist, structuralist and poststructuralist approaches to early modern narrative; and genre theory. How might early modern narrative invite us to question some of the assumptions of narrative theory, with its traditional emphasis on the novel? What kind of narrative theory (or theories) does early modern literature offer us?

Please email 200-word abstracts to Eve Houghton (eh565@cam.ac.uk) by July 31, 2025.