ABSTRACT
Narratology is concerned with the narrative picturebook. Nonnarrative picturebooks are beyond its interest, although narratology offers insights which can be applied to various kinds of picturebooks. A visual narrator may convey narrative meanings equivalent to those conveyed by a verbal narrator, and may do this by means of narrative techniques implicit to narrative pictures as a medium. Narrative perspective or point of view is a prime topic of narratological research focusing on discourse-related narrative strategies and their combinations. The narratological approach to picturebooks asks questions about the specific contributions of verbal and visual information to the narrative meaning. The reading process brings about another aspect: narrative is understood as communication. Picturebook research benefits from the redefined field of interest of narratology denoted as "transmedial narratology" and "media-conscious narratology". It focuses both on medium-free aspects of narratives and on medium-specific features of various narrative forms.
