Seymour Chatman (born 1928) is an American film and literary critic, a professor emeritus of rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. He is one of the most significant figures of American narratology (theory of narrative), being regarded as a prominent representative of its Structuralist or "classic" branch.
Among his works that were translated into several languages are The Later Style of Henry James (1972), Story and Discourse. Narrative Structure in fiction and Film (1978), Michelangelo Antonioni, or, the Surface of the World (1986), Coming to Terms. The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film (1990), Reading Narrative Fiction (1993), and with Paul Duncan, Michelangelo Antonioni: The Complete Films (2004).