Narrator

Abstract

In the literal sense, the term “narrator” designates the inner-textual (textually encoded) highest-level speech position from which the current narrative discourse as a whole originates and from which references to the entities, actions and events that this discourse is about are being made. Through a dual process of metonymic transfer and anthropomorphization, the term narrator is then employed to designate a presumed textually projected occupant of this position, the hypothesized producer of the current discourse, the individual agent who serves as the answer to Genette’s question qui parle? The narrator, which is a strictly textual category, should be clearly distinguished from the author (Schönert → Author [1]) who is of course an actual person.