ABSTRACT
Commentators sometimes begin by stating the truism that any tale involves a teller, and that, therefore, narrative study must analyse two basic components: the tale and the teller. But as much could be said of every speech event: there is always inherently a speaker, separable from what is spoken. What makes narratives different, especially literary or extended spoken ones, is that the teller is often particularly noticeable. Tellers of long narratives can be surprisingly present and perceptible even as they unfold a tale that ostensibly draws all our attention, as readers or listeners, to other individuals who are within the tale. As a result we may feel that we are dividing our attention between two objects of interest: the individuals and events in the story itself, and the individual telling us about these. Thus when we read Coleridge’s ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ or Bronte’s Wuthering Heights or listen to the rambling anec dote of a friend, part of the experience is the activity of ‘reading’ or scru tinizing the character of the teller: the returned mariner, Lockwood, the friend. Already the two literary examples cited involve an enriching com plication. In both texts mentioned, there is more than one teller: besides the mariner, for instance, is a ‘higher’ teller who writes, ‘It is an ancient Mariner/And he stoppeth one of three’. But we can address such compli cations later, and should concentrate here on narrative’s dual essential foci, teller and tale.
