Narratology is the theory and systematic study of narrative. It has been with us in one form or another throughout the twentieth century, and it has evolved into one of the most tangible, coherent and precise areas of expertise in literary and cultural studies. It began as a science of narrative form and structure, acquired a formidable dominance as an approach to literary narrative, overshadowed historical perspective for several decades and then, somewhere in the middle of the 1980s, ran into problems. After years of protest from the historicist camps and after two decades of assault from poststructuralists on its scientific orientation and authority, people started to declare the death of narratology.