ABSTRACT
Gerard Genette's use of the word 'instance' is meant to erase the ideological associations of subjectivity that accompany traditional concepts of narrator and author, and to underline the functionality of their roles, in same way Greimas uses the term 'actant' to describe the functional role of agents of action, whether human or otherwise, at fabula level. Inversely, every intradiegetic narrating does not necessarily produce, like Des Grieux's, an oral narrative. It can consist of a written text, like the memoir with no recipient written by Adolphe, or even a fictive literary text, a work within a work, like the 'story' of Curious Impertinent discovered in a cloak bag by the curate in DonQuixote. The extradiegetic narrator can also pretend, like Meursault, to address no one, but this posture fairly widespread in the contemporary non-obviously cannot change the fact that a narrative, like every discourse, is necessarily addressed to someone and always contains below the surface an appeal to the receiver.
