The research project undertakes a systematic analysis of the interference between complex figurative and stylistic processes, on the one hand, and layered narrative settings, on the other, in a historically differentiated corpus of eventful narrative texts (Grimmelshausen, Forster, Kleist, Meyer, Keller, Raabe). Special attention is being paid to the cotextual embeddedness of the figurative processes and to the ways in which they elicit the response and commitment of the reader.